# The Base Plugin

The Base Plugin provides some tasks and conventions that are common to most builds and adds a structure to the build that promotes consistency in how they are run. Its most significant contribution is a set of lifecycle tasks that act as an umbrella for the more specific tasks provided by other plugins and build authors.

## Usage

Example 1. Applying the Base Plugin
build.gradle

    plugins {
        id 'base'
    }

build.gradle.kts

    plugins {
        base
    }

## Task

`clean` — `Delete`

  Deletes the build directory and everything in it, i.e. the path specified by the Project.getBuildDir() project property.

`check` — lifecycle task

  Plugins and build authors should attach their verification tasks, such as ones that run tests, to this lifecycle task using `check.dependsOn(task)`.

`assemble` — lifecycle task

  Plugins and build authors should attach tasks that produce distributions and other consumable artifacts to this lifecycle task. For example, `jar` produces the consumable artifact for Java libraries. Attach tasks to this lifecycle task using `assemble.dependsOn(task)`.

`build` — lifecycle task

  Depends on: `check`, `assemble`

  Intended to build everything, including running all tests, producing the production artifacts and generating documentation. You will probably rarely attach concrete tasks directly to `build` as `assemble` and `check` are typically more appropriate.

`buildConfiguration` — task rule

  Assembles those artifacts attached to the named configuration. For example, `buildArchives` will execute any task that is required to create any artifact attached to the `archives` configuration.

`uploadConfiguration` — task rule

  Does the same as `buildConfiguration`, but also uploads all the artifacts attached to the given configuration.

`cleanTask` — task rule

  Removes the defined outputs of a task, e.g. `cleanJar` will delete the JAR file produced by the `jar` task of the Java Plugin.

## Dependency management

The Base Plugin adds no configurations for dependencies, but it does add the following configurations for artifacts:

`default`

  A fallback configuration used by consumer projects. Let’s say you have project B with a project dependency on project A. Gradle uses some internal logic to determine which of project A’s artifacts and dependencies are added to the specified configuration of project B. If no other factors apply — you don’t need to worry what these are — then Gradle falls back to using everything in project A’s `default` configuration.

  New builds and plugins should not be using the `default` configuration! It remains for the reason of backwards compatibility.

`archives`

  A standard configuration for the production artifacts of a project. This results in an `uploadArchives` task for publishing artifacts attached to the `archives` configuration.

Note that the `assemble` task generates all artifacts that are attached to the `archives` configuration.

## Conventions

The Base Plugin only adds conventions related to the creation of archives, such as ZIPs, TARs and JARs. Specifically, it provides the following project properties that you can set:

`archivesBaseName` — default: `$project.name`

  Provides the default AbstractArchiveTask.getArchiveBaseName() for archive tasks.

`distsDirName` — default: distributions

  Default name of the directory in which distribution archives, i.e. non-JARs, are created.

`libsDirName` — default: libs

  Default name of the directory in which library archives, i.e. JARs, are created.

The plugin also provides default values for the following properties on any task that extends AbstractArchiveTask:

`destinationDirectory`

  Defaults to `$buildDir`/`$distsDirName` for non-JAR archives and `$buildDir`/`$libsDirName` for JARs and derivatives of JAR, such as WARs.

`archiveVersion`

  Defaults to `$project.version` or 'unspecified' if the project has no version.

`archiveBaseName`

  Defaults to `$archivesBaseName`.