Gradle plugin configuration
The OpenRewrite Gradle Plugin is the fastest way to apply OpenRewrite recipes to your code as part of your Gradle build. The OpenRewrite Gradle Plugin is compatible with all versions of Gradle since 4.0.
Plugin configuration
Apply the org.openrewrite.rewrite plugin to your build.
plugins {
id("java")
id("org.openrewrite.rewrite") version("latest.release")
}
rewrite {
// OpenRewrite Extension Configuration
}
// Ensure a repository is declared that the rewrite core libraries can be resolved from
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
With the plugin applied, the rewrite DSL is available for configuration.
Multi-module Gradle projects
When applied to a multi-project build, plugin behavior differs depending on whether the plugin is applied to the root project or to a sub-project. Applied to the root project, the plugin will parse and refactor all sources from all projects. Applied to any project other than the root project, the plugin will parse and refactor only sources from that project.
The rewrite Gradle plugin resolves the rewrite core libraries and any recipe modules added to the rewrite configuration at runtime. It will attempt to resolve them from whatever repositories are available to the project. This is accomplished by adding Maven Central, or a mirror of it, to your project's repositories:
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
Configuring the 'rewrite' DSL
It generally makes sense to apply the plugin to the root build.gradle in a repository so that the configuration applies to each project in a multi-module project. You may also find it beneficial to check out the auto-generated Gradle plugin Javadoc which contains type information among other things.
| Property | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
activeRecipes | List<String> | Empty list | Fully qualified class names of recipes to activate. Recipes will only run when explicitly activated here or in a rewrite.yml file. |
activeStyles | List<String> | Empty list | Fully qualified class names of styles to activate. Styles will only be applied when explicitly activated here or in a rewrite.yml file. |
configFile | File | rewrite.yml | Path to the OpenRewrite YAML configuration file. Defaults to rewrite.yml in the project directory. |
checkstyleConfigFile | File | null | Optional path to a Checkstyle configuration file. When set, OpenRewrite will use it to inform Java code style decisions. If not set explicitly, the plugin will attempt to auto-detect a Checkstyle configuration from the Checkstyle Gradle plugin. |
enableExperimentalGradleBuildScriptParsing | boolean | true | Whether to parse Gradle build scripts (build.gradle) as part of the source set. Defaults to true. |
exportDatatables | boolean | false | Whether to export data tables to <build directory>/reports/rewrite/datatables/<timestamp>. Defaults to false. |
exclusions | List<String> | Empty list | Glob patterns for files to exclude from processing. For example: "src/generated/**". |
plainTextMasks | List<String> | Empty list | Glob patterns for files that should be parsed as plain text. Defaults to a comprehensive list including **/*.md, **/*.sql, **/*.txt, and others. Exclusions take precedence over plain text masks. |
sizeThresholdMb | int | 10 | Maximum file size in megabytes. Source files larger than this threshold are skipped during parsing. Defaults to 10. |
rewriteVersion | String | null | Override the version of rewrite core libraries to be used. When null, the version bundled with the plugin is used. |
logCompilationWarningsAndErrors | boolean | false | Whether to log Java compilation warnings and errors encountered during parsing. Defaults to false. |
failOnInvalidActiveRecipes | boolean | false | Whether to throw an exception if an activeRecipe fails configuration validation. This may happen if the activeRecipe is improperly configured, or any downstream recipes are improperly configured. For the time, this default is "false" to prevent one improperly configured recipe from failing the build. In the future, this default may be changed to "true" to be more restrictive. |
failOnDryRunResults | boolean | false | Whether rewriteDryRun should fail the build when it detects that changes would be made. Useful in CI to enforce that all recipes have already been applied. Defaults to false. |
throwOnParseFailures | boolean | false | Whether to throw an exception when source file parsing fails. Can also be enabled via the project property -Prewrite.throwOnParseFailures. Defaults to false. |
plugins {
id("java")
id("org.openrewrite.rewrite") version("latest.release")
}
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
rewrite {
activeRecipe("com.yourorg.ExampleRecipe", "com.yourorg.ExampleRecipe2")
activeStyle("com.yourorg.ExampleStyle", "com.yourorg.ExampleStyle2")
exclusion(
// Excludes a particular yaml file
"subproject-a/src/main/resources/generated.yaml",
// Exclude all json files
"**/*.json"
)
plainTextMask("**/*.txt")
// These are default values, shown for example. It isn't necessary to supply these values manually:
configFile = project.getRootProject().file("rewrite.yml")
failOnDryRunResults = false
sizeThresholdMb = 10
}
Activating OpenRewrite recipes
All OpenRewrite libraries and modules are published to MavenCentral. Use the repositories Gradle DSL to ensure that your build can resolve dependencies from there or one of its mirrors.
No recipe is ever run on your codebase without being explicitly activated in the plugin's configuration. To make pre-packaged OpenRewrite recipes available for activation, add Rewrite's bill of materials along with the specific rewrite dependencies:
dependencies {
rewrite(platform("org.openrewrite.recipe:rewrite-recipe-bom:latest.release"))
rewrite("org.openrewrite.recipe:rewrite-spring")
}
Once a pre-packaged recipe has been added to the rewrite dependency configuration, you can tell the Gradle plugin to activate it the rewrite DSL. For example, here is how you would activate the org.openrewrite.java.testing.junit5.JUnit5BestPractices recipe that comes with rewrite-testing-frameworks in a single-project Gradle build:
plugins {
id("java")
id("org.openrewrite.rewrite") version("latest.release")
}
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
testImplementation("junit:junit:4.13")
rewrite(platform("org.openrewrite.recipe:rewrite-recipe-bom:latest.release"))
rewrite("org.openrewrite.recipe:rewrite-testing-frameworks")
}
rewrite {
activeRecipe("org.openrewrite.java.testing.junit5.JUnit5BestPractices")
}
The "Run" task
Execute gradle rewriteRun to run the active recipes and apply the changes. This will write changes locally to your source files on disk. Afterward, review the changes, and when you are comfortable with the changes, commit them. The run goal generates warnings in the build log wherever it makes changes to source files.

After the goal finishes executing, run git diff (or your VCS system's equivalent) to see what changes were made, review, and commit them.

JVM args that can be added to the Gradle command line
It is possible to control the active recipe and style using JVM arguments in the command line.
- To change the active recipe, you can specify either
rewrite.activeRecipeorrewrite.activeRecipes(both do the same thing and take the same input). - To change the style, you can specify either
rewrite.activeStyleorrewrite.activeStyles(both do the same thing and take the same input).
Here's an example of what this might look like if you were to use rewriteRun with an init script:
gradle rewriteRun --init-script init.gradle -Drewrite.activeRecipe=org.openrewrite.FindSpringUses
In general, it's best to default to not passing in any styles and to allow rewrite to detect the styles itself. If you need to, though, you can always append -Drewrite.activeStyle to the end of the command:
-Drewrite.activeStyle=com.yourorg.YesTabsNoStarImports
The "dryRun" task
Execute gradle rewriteDryRun to dry-run the active recipes and print which visitors would make changes to which files in the build log. This does not alter your source files on disk at all. This goal can be used to preview the changes that would be made by the active recipes.
rewriteDryRun outputs a report in the form of a patch file, by default under build/reports/rewrite/rewrite.patch, containing changes that would be made if you were to run rewriteRun. This patch file can be used with git or diff to view or apply the potential changes. For example, git diff . build/reports/rewrite/rewrite.patch.

rewriteDryRun can be used as a "gate" in a continuous integration environment by failing the build if rewriteDryRun detects changes to be made and failOnDryRunResults is set to true:
rewrite {
// ...
failOnDryRunResults = true
}
If desired, rewriteDryRun can be configured so that when check runs, rewriteDryRun does too:
tasks.named("check").configure {
dependsOn(tasks.named("rewriteDryRun"))
}
The "Discover" task
Execute gradle rewriteDiscover to list the recipes available on your classpath.
