"Use Gradle wrapper's default" meaning

[mauromol]

On https://issuetracker.springsource.com/browse/STS-2276 I asked the following question to Kris De Volder:

Is the option "Use Gradle wrapper's default" in Window | Preferences | Gradle under "Gradle Distribution" meant to be "use your project wrapper as specified in build.gradle" or rather "use the default Gradle wrapper that comes with STS"? I never understood this clearly.

He replied:

It means that Gradle's decision on what version / distribution to use is not interferred with by STS. I.e. we don't tell Gradle what version or distribution it should use and leave it entirely up to the tooling API. Supposedly, this means it will consult the gradle wrapper properties if it can find them in the expected location. If it can't find them it uses the version programmed into the tooling API (should be the same as the tooling API version).

Alternatively you select a specific distribution and in that case STS will tell the tooling API to use that specific one. This setting will override any wrapper properties etc.

If you have a suggestion on what would be a better phrase to put in the prefs page, that's easy enough to change. Any ideas?

I redirected the discussion here, since it's offtopic on that issue report.

[mauromol]

What about "Let Gradle autodetect the version to use by inspecting your project files"?
Or: "Autodetect from gradle-wrapper.properties".
Or: "Use the version specified by your project for the Gradle wrapper".

The main reason for which I asked this question is that I can't see any evidence of the Gradle version actually used by STS when it's running (a simple string in the console output to say "Using Gradle version x.y" would be useful). So, even if I actually guessed the meaning of the option "Use Gradle wrapper's default", at least in the past I sometimes suspected that the version specified in gradle-wrapper.properties by my project was not actually taken correctly.

[Kris De Volder]

I would go with "Autodetect from gradle-wrapper.properties" mainly because it is shorter. Longer texts make the ui look more cluttered.

> ... I can't see any evidence of the Gradle version actually used by STS when it's running ...

Well, to be accurate STS is not using or picking the version and in fact until some tooling API changes a while back could not even know what version is being used.

I would also like to see a hint about the version used, back when I looked at printing such a line of info myself this wasn't yet possible, but I believe it is possible now so maybe I'll revisit that again:

http://issues.gradle.org/browse/GRADLE-1533

Kris

[Kris De Volder]

Raised a issue for the 'print version' request: https://issuetracker.springsource.com/browse/STS-3002

This issue is tagged with 'help wanted'. It seems like a relatively easy thing to fix, exactly the kind of thing someone other than myself could try to fix to start getting familiar with the code.

EDIT: Mauro, just to clarify I don't mean to put pressure on you personally to fix it, I'm already very grateful of the help you provided in the form of raising many issues and all the constructive feedback you have given me over time.

[Kris De Volder]

Another issue raised to change the wording in the prefs page:
https://issuetracker.springsource.com/browse/STS-3003

Also tagged with 'help-wanted'. This is really quite trivial to fix, the hardest part is comping up with a good short phrase really :-)
(And also maybe actually setting up one's development environment before making the actual change)