Gradle subproject ordering and generate jar (spring boot + angular) - spring-boot

Question

I am a Gradle newby. I have the following project setup:
Root
core: contains spring boot 2 application
ui: angular 5 front-end application
Goal: I want to run 'gradle build' from my root folder and it should contain one jar file which includes the Angular app.
I got the 'ui' covered:
apply plugin: "com.moowork.node"
buildscript {
repositories globalRepositories
dependencies {
classpath "com.moowork.gradle:gradle-node-plugin:1.2.0"
}
}
node {
// based on current version of Angular 5
version = "8.9.1"
npmVersion = "5.6.0"
download = true
}
task buildAngular(type: NpmTask) {
args = ['run', 'build']
}
buildAngular.dependsOn(npm_install)
build.dependsOn(buildAngular)
The above gradle definition will build and generate the Angular files in the static backend core application.
The 'core' gradle build file looks like this (I excluded the dependencies), nothing special:
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot'
apply plugin: 'io.spring.dependency-management'
group = 'xxx.xxxxxx'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = 1.8
targetCompatibility = 1.8
buildscript {
repositories globalRepositories
ext {
springBootVersion = '2.0.0.M7'
}
dependencies {
classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:${springBootVersion}")
}
}
jar {
baseName = 'spring-boot-angular'
version = '1.0.0'
}
How can I make this possible? I want the following actions to be triggered when I run 'gradle build' from my root project:
run first 'gradle build' in ui
then second run 'gradle build' in core
use the generated jar file from 'core' as the end result
I can't stand the groovy like syntax, can't wait for Gradle Kotlin DSL to mature :P
Hope somebody can help. I will open source this setup (together with Spring 5, Hibernate 5 and flyway) when I get this up and ready. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You need to include the result of the frontend (ui) buildAngular task inside the jar generated in the backend (core) build:
bootJar {
dependsOn ':ui:buildAngular'
into('BOOT-INF/classes/static') {
from "${project(':ui').projectDir}/dist"
}
}
The fact that the bootJar task now depends on the buildAngular task of the frontend will make gradle order them as needed.
You can browse this project of mine to have an example using basically the same setup (except it uses yarn instead of npm to resolve dependencies)

Answer 2

Answer of JB Nizet should work. You can also add the following in the root gradle file:
build.dependsOn("core:build").mustRunAfter("ui:build")
Above answer is in my opinion cleaner.