Gradle, JavaEE and Netbeans integration

Question

I want to switch build systems from ANT to Gradle, mainly in order to make use of the dependency management features.

I can properly package the ear file, and automatically deploy to Glassfish using Gradle but at the moment I'm not very happy with the deployment and debugging capabilities. With the ANT build I have in place deployment which takes about 4 seconds whereas a full deploy ranges from 12 to 30 seconds. As for the debugging, I can start Glassfish in debug mode, and manually attach the debugger, but this is also a far cry from the convenience I had before, ie just click debug.

Is javaEE Gradle integration generally lacking in IDE's or is Netbeans just behind the curve on this, or am I missing something? Changing IDE is not really an option since this is what my team uses.

Answer 1

Your project generally should be IDE indepent and gradle supports that, so you should be able to switch IDEs without mouch trouble. But let me tell you that gradle support in other IDEs isn't great either.
The problem with slowness comes from gradle itself.
The part I don't understand is, why can you change your build system but not your IDE. Normaly it's the other way around.
Finally I'd suggest you use maven as your build tool, because support in netbeans is superb and the speed, even though not comparable with ant, is pretty decent.