Mendix plugin for Gradle

This plugin helps you to work with a Mendix project using Gradle. It provides wrappers for the Mendix tools as mxbuild and mx, making interaction version agnostic. The plugin also provides run and distribution options. The plugin works on Windows and Linux. Mac support will be added when CLI tools are available.

Additionally the plugin configures the project as Java application so that IDEs supporting Gradle, like IntelliJ IDEA, can be used to work with the project. The configuration adds the project Java source files and necessary dependencies.

Experimental

This is an experimental project and comes without warranty and support.

This project aims to experiment with the interaction, automation, and distribution of Mendix applications. We welcome feedback on these aspects that could be addressed by this plugin or in the Mendix platform itself.

Version support for Mendix tools and runtime

This plugin covers two items

• Wrap Mendix CLI tools for easy use
• Build a Mendix app distribution

CLI tool support

The Gradle plugin supports Mendix CLI tools for various versions and operating systems.

Mendix Version	OS	Notes
All	Windows	On Windows all versions are supported when they are installed.
> 9.16	Linux	For Linux tools tools are always downloaded from CDN. Starting this version tools are compiled as native Linux executables.
> 9.23	Windows	Starting this version Windows tooling can be downloaded from CDN. In case not available locally.

Note: when running Mendix tooling on Linux it depends on system library libuci-dev to be installed.

Note: MacOS is not supported as StudioPro Mac doesn't ship CLI tools.

App distribution support

Version 10.11 of Mendix runtime includes a boot file config option (see mxWriteConfig and mxRun) which doesn't depend on external tools like M2EE Tools or Docker Build Pack to run an application.

Starting version 10.11 the mxRun and mxDistZip commands are supported to create a Mendix app distribution package.

Create or configure a Mendix project

To use the plugin your Mendix project needs to be a Gradle project. To create a Gradle project execute gradle.bat. On Windows Studio Pro includes a copy of Gradle, based on th default installation folder the command will be

"c:\Program Files\Mendix\gradle-8.5\bin\gradle.bat" init --type basic --dsl groovy

Answer the values and check if the project is created, gradlew.bat and build.gradle is created.

Open build.gradle and add

plugins {
    id "application"
    id "com.mendixlabs.mendix-gradle-plugin" version "0.0.7"
}
 
mendix {
    mendixVersion = "10.21.1.64969"
    mprFileName = "App.mpr"
}

See Extension configuration for plugin configuration details. In case the Gradle files are added to a folder where the Mendix project already exists, make sure that mprFileName is set to the name of the Mendix project file.

For a new project initialize t with

gradlew.bat mxEnsureModeler mxInit

Versioning

The plugin uses the version value from gradle.properties in the build and distribution tasks as input.

Usage

Use gradlew.bat tasks to view which tasks are available. It is also possible to specify custom tasks.

Note: task dependencies are not set for mxbuild. Mxbuild takes quite some time and this plugin doesn't contain a good way yet to determine if the project and its associated files have changed. Therefore it is required to run mxbuild manually when the project source has changed.

Build an app

gradlew.bat mxbuild

Run an app

Assumes mxbuild is executed.

gradlew.bat mxEnsureRuntime mxWriteConfigs mxDeployMda mxRun

Distribute an app

Assumes mxbuild is executed.

gradlew.bat mxEnsureRuntime mxWriteConfigs mxStartScripts mxDistZip

To see the content of the distribution browse to build\distributions and open the zip. To run the distribution in this project execute.

gradlew.bat installMxDist
build\install\<app-name>\bin\start.bat

IDE Support

The plugins configures the project as Java application for IDEs that support Gradle. Java dependencies are added based on the files present in the userlib and vendorlib folder. To manage dependencies use the Java Dependencies option for the Module Settings inside Studio Pro and then sync the project. Reload the project after changing in the IDE to see the changes.

The Java version specified inside the Mendix project is not yet synced. Set the java.sourceCompatibility and java.targetCompatibility in the build.gradle for this.

Developing

This plugin is based on

• Java 11: This is the Java version supported by Mendix 9 and the early 10 versions.
• Gradle 8.5: Studio Pro ships with this version and hence this version is used as that is already available on the developers machine.

To use a development version, check out this project and compile and publish. For Gradle make this version available with Java on the PATH or set JAVA_HOME. Then execute the following command to publish the plugin into the local maven cache.

gradlew.bat build publishToMavenLocal

To use the development version in a project add the following at the top of the settings.gradle file:

pluginManagement {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
        mavenCentral()
        gradlePluginPortal()
    }
}

Then configuration the plugin target project using the version found in the plugin/build.gradle.kts file.

License

Copyright 2024 Mendix Technology BV

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

The license is included in the project as LICENSE.