Gretty is a feature-rich Gradle plugin for running web-apps on embedded servlet containers. It supports Jetty version 11, Tomcat version 10, multiple web-apps and many more. It wraps servlet container functions as convenient Gradle tasks and configuration DSL.

A complete list of Gretty features is available in feature overview.

You are looking at Gretty's master branch which is for Gretty 4. You also might want to look at the gretty-3.x one which is for Gretty 3. It is still in development and supports older (non-Jakarta) versions of Jetty and Tomcat.

Where to start

If you are new with Gretty, try getting started page.

⭐ What's new

Version 4.1.6

December 6, 2024, Gretty 4.1.6 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Fix product runs (thanks @aindlq)
• Provide a clear list of supported containers (thanks @ljcyu)

Version 4.1.5

July 15, 2024, Gretty 4.1.5 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Make Gretty aware of Gradle Java Toolchain (thanks @mr-serjey)

Version 4.1.4

May 22, 2024, Gretty 4.1.4 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Fix jetty redeploy with custom jetty-env.xml
• Support folders under "src/resources" in fastReload configuration property

Version 4.1.3

March 18, 2024, Gretty 4.1.3 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Update Tomcat and Bouncy Castle (thanks to @pranav24gupta)

Version 4.1.2

January 6, 2024, Gretty 4.1.2 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• jettyStart throws exception if using jetty-env.xml #299 (special thanks to @gy-chen.

Version 4.1.1

October 25, 2023, Gretty 4.1.1 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Fix broken restart tasks after runner classpath separation

• Use appropriate class loader for servermanger commands. Thanks to Shane Hird.

• Upgrade Tomcat version to 10.1.5. Thanks to @pranav24gupta.

Version 4.1.0

July 12, 2023, Gretty 4.1.0 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Drops Gradle 6 support

• Enables stricter plugin validation

• Adds Gradle 8 integration test build

August 24, 2022, Gretty 4.0.3 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Changes in this version:

• Replace internal Gradle API usage with public API #263

• Tomcat 10.0.22

• Jetty 11.0.11

June 2, 2022, Gretty 4.0.2 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Changes in this version:

• Use Tomcat 10.0.21

• Use Jetty 11.0.9

• Use Gradle 7.4.2 for testing Gretty

• Added exclusion patterns for commons-cli and commons-io classes to FilteringClassLoader #258 Adding the patterns fixes a bug which gave preference to the commons-cli and commons-io versions that Gretty uses, rather than using the JARs bundled with the webapp (which is the correct behavior).

• Upgrade to Logback 1.3.0-alpha14

• Remove Groovy-based logging configuration in response to Log4Shell #249

February 25, 2022, Gretty 4.0.1 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Changes in this version:

• Fix inability to build a product due to missing Groovy dependencies (#238).

• Version upgrades to mitigate some CVEs (#252). Thanks to @dutta1kartik3.

September 1, 2021, Gretty 4.0.0 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Changes in this version:

• Gretty requires JDK11+.

• Gretty supports only Tomcat 10 and Jetty 11 (Jakarta versions of the containers). All thanks goes to @f4lco.

July 27, 2021, Gretty 3.0.6 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

• Changes in this version:

• JDK 16 support

June 28, 2021, Gretty 3.0.5 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Maven Central.

Please note that Gretty 3.0.5 is the first one not using JCenter but rather Maven Central. Be sure to change your jcenter() to mavenCentral() in your Gradle files.

• Changes in this version:

• Added some release details for Maven Central.

• Added uploadArchives for upload to Maven Central.

• Restored simple GPG signing in prep for replacement of Bintray with Maven Central.

• Build with Gradle 6.x in Jitpack

• Use a fixed Gecko driver version

• Use Gradle 6.9 for the "global" build

• Fix the gradle clean task

• Update some packages

• Gradle defines version as an object so we need to make sure we are doing explicit to String conversion

• Revert "Purge identical builds by removing 'pull_request' trigger from GH actions"

• Replace deprecated JavaExec.main usage with JavaExec.mainClass property

• Merge pull request #218 from brandonramirez/loopback_address_bind

• Update Gradle wrapper to 7.0-rc-2

• Remove Gradle wrapper task definitions

• Add Java 16 and build only against currently supported versions of Java

• Update actions/setup-java

• Purge identical builds by removing 'pull_request' trigger from GH actions

• Run tests on JUnit 5 on Gradle 7

• Upgrade dependencies in Gradle 7 build

• Replace jcenter repository with Maven Central

• Rely on Groovy version shipped with Gradle

• Add Gradle 7 build job

• Explicitly bind to loopback address rather than local address to fix a BindException.

• Use the springBoot option when it is not null (#213)

• Avoid calling afterEvaluate on already evaluated project

• Remove unused import

• Improve the code structure

• Improve the dependency resolving logic

• Update Gradle's version in CI

• [skip ci] Remove mentions of Tomcat 10 in the changes.md file too

• Remove publishing to Bintray on push

• Fixed 'multiple plugins are using the same ID' error in publishPlugins. (#211)

March 30, 2021, Gretty 3.0.4 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

Special thanks to all contributors to this release, and especially Boris Petrov, Falco Duersch and Stefan Wolf for multiple contributions.

• Changes in this version:

• Gradle 7 support

• Fix handling of httpsIdleTimeout in Tomcat (#144)

• Fix behavior of maxPostSize in Tomcat (#144)

• Guard remaining calls to Connector#setProperty with assertions (#144)

• Removed calls to Jetty 9.4 deprecated method (soLingerTime) (#171)

• Update Gradle's testing version to 6.6.1 and geckodriver to 0.27.0

• Fix issue #104 - Bug: HotReload Exception with Composite

• Correctly populate the writer field in ServerStartEventImpl

• Fix issue #104 - Bug: HotReload Exception with Composite

• Ability to add additinal files to product build.

• Update ASM

• Update default Tomcat versions

• Also run the full test suite on JDK 15

• Use a specific Gradle version for all Travis tasks

• Update Gradle's version to 6.8.3

• Non-blocking context initialization. Fix "redeploy" cleanup.

• Update Groovy

• Migrate from Travis CI to GitHub actions

• Annotate ServerConfig to fix Gradle deprecation warnings (#195)

• Annotate WebAppConfig, StartBaseTask, AppAfterIntegrationTestTask, AppBeforeIntegrationTestTask, AppServiceTask, FarmStartTask, AppRedeployTask, FarmAfterIntegrationTestTask, FarmBeforeIntegrationTestTask, FarmIntegrationTestTask, JacocoHelper

• Rename annotated interfaces for tasks

• Fix a bunch of Gradle deprecation warnings

• Use api for libs/gretty dependencies

• Lazily add source and classes dirs

• Use Gradle's Task Configuration Avoidance APIs in a few places

• Add validation task to gretty plugin

• Use java-gradle-plugin for generating the plugin properties

• Upgrade to newest version of the publishing plugin

• Enable stricter validation for validatePlugins

• Replace deprecated task name in jacocoInstantiateTasks itest

• Move common.gradle to a precompiled script plugin

• Use different configuration for library and plugin projects

• Move some more things out of afterEvaluate

• Fix source- and targetCompatibility versions

• Use publication for uploading to bintray

• Remove the maven plugin

• Use new API for publishing javadoc and sources

• Add a missing bintrayUserOrg property

• Fix using the wrong configuration for runner-projects

• Use task configuration avoidance (easy instances) #141

• Add some dependencies needed by Groovy 3

• Spring support: avoid classloading of webapp classes at configuration time

May 7, 2020, Gretty 3.0.3 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

• Changes in this version:

• Updated ASM to 8.0.1.

• Fixed excess logging output and set initial log level (#150).

• Removed deprecated check for already in-use ports (#147).

• Added support for Gradle 5.6 debugging API.

• Fixed incorrect serialization of the initParameters in productBuild.

• Updated Tomcat 9 version and TC9 servlet API version.

• Set javaExec debug options properly.

• Updated Gradle 6 testing to use Gradle 6.3.

See complete list of changes for more information.

March 29, 2020, Gretty 3.0.2 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

This release brings Java 14 support, deprecation fixes for Gradle 6.x and bug-fixes.

https://bintray.com/javabrett/maven/org.gretty/view

December 2, 2019, Gretty 3.0.1 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

This release contains further fixes for Gradle 6.0 support.

December 1, 2019, Gretty 3.0.0 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

This release introduces Gradle 6.0 support and retires support for JDK7, Gradle versions <5.0 and Tomcat 7.x and 8.0.x.

See complete list of changes for more information.

December 5, 2018, Gretty 2.3.1 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

This maintenance release addresses some issues found in Gretty 2.3.0. See complete list of changes for more information.

November 28, 2018, Gretty 2.3.0 is out and available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

This release adds support for Gradle 5.0, which was released this week! Please raise an issue if you find any issues running Gretty 2.3+ with Gradle 5.0.

See also: complete list of changes for more information.

May 21, 2018, Gretty(.org) 2.2.0 is out and immediately available at Gradle Plugins and Bintray.

• Changes in this version:

• Bumped default Tomcat 9 version to 9.0.6 (was 9.0.5).

• Support added for Tomcat 8.5 and Tomcat support refactoring (thanks Boris Petrov). Tomcat 8.5 replaces deprecated Tomcat 8.0.

• Bumped Spring Boot version to 1.5.9 (was 1.5.4).

• Bumped versions of asm (6.1.1, was 6.0), Groovy (2.4.15, was 2.4.13) and Spring (4.3.16, was 4.3.9) (thanks Henrik Brautaset Aronsen).

• Fixed incompatibility with java-library plugin (thanks Ollie Freeman).

• Dev: various build and test improvements.

See also: complete list of changes for more information.

Documentation

You can learn about all Gretty features in online documentation.

System requirements

Gretty requires JDK11+ and Gradle 6.0 or newer.

• Since version 2.0.0 Gretty no longer supports JDK6.
• Since version 3.0.0 Gretty no longer supports JDK7, Gradle <5.0, Tomcat 7.x or Tomcat 8.0.x.
• Since version 4.0.0 Gretty supports only JDK 11+, Gradle 6.0+, Tomcat 10.x and Jetty 11.x

Availability

Gretty is an open-source project and is freely available in sources as well as in compiled form.

Releases of Gretty (gretty.org fork) from 2.1.0 onwards are available at Bintray. Old releases of Gretty up to and including version 2.0.0 are available at Bintray.

Copyright and License

Copyright 2013-2020 (c) Andrey Hihlovskiy, Timur Shakurov and contributors.

All versions, present and past, of Gretty are licensed under MIT license.