How can I apply the Gradle Versions Plugin from an initscript?

gradle

Solution

Plugins can be applied in a few different ways. In the referenced answer from the question, they are being applied by type. You can also apply by plugin Id, which is a `String`.

In your second attempt when you are applying by Id you are doing the right thing, but the build errors out with:

Plugin with id 'com.github.ben-manes.versions' not found.

The issue here is that you currently cannot apply plugins by Id from init scripts (#gradle/1322).

The solution is to instead, apply the plugin by type.

Luckily, the plugin is open source so it relatively simple to discover the type of the plugin. The plugin Id is `com.github.ben-manes.versions`, which leads us to the `META-INF/gradle-plugins/com.github.ben-manes.versions.properties` file. This file contains the line `implementation-class=com.github.benmanes.gradle.versions.VersionsPlugin`, which tells us that the type of the plugin is `com.github.benmanes.gradle.versions.VersionsPlugin`. This could have also be determined by applying the plugin to the build (instead of through an init script) and inspecting the `plugins` or `pluginManager` from the project to list out the plugin types.

To make the fix change this line:

apply plugin: 'com.github.ben-manes.versions'

to:

apply plugin: com.github.benmanes.gradle.versions.VersionsPlugin

So the full, working initscript is:

initscript {                                                                    
    repositories {                                                              
       jcenter()                                                                
    }                                                                           

    dependencies {                                                              
        classpath 'com.github.ben-manes:gradle-versions-plugin:0.17.0'          
    }                                                                           
}                                                                               


allprojects {                                                                   
    apply plugin: com.github.benmanes.gradle.versions.VersionsPlugin            
}                                                                               

Problem

Original source