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Hi everyone,

I am looking for a way to download dependency sources in Gradle (without using Eclipse, Intellij or any other IDE). Is there currently a way of doing this? Maybe a plugin?

Thank you

hi :wave:

Yes, it's possible to download sources (I'm assuming you mean Java sources)

There's a whole demo project here <https://github.com/gradle/source-resolution-demo>, but don't be intimidated by the size, it's a lot more complicated than it needs to be for some reason.

The summary of what you need to do is to is:

1. create a Configuration for _declaring_ dependencies
2. create another Configuration for _resolving_ the declared dependencies
3. Set the correct Attributes on the _resolving_ Configuration that say "I want to download Java sources"
4. define a task that will _resolve_ the Configuration

build.gradle.kts.kt

Something like this :)

(written with Gradle 8.6)

<@U02KX5B7EVC> this is great, thank you very much! I will take a look

Do you know how much backwards compatible this solution is?

backwards compatible in what regard? With different Gradle versions?

`isCanBeDeclared` is newer, Gradle 8.something, but the rest should be compatible with even very old versions

Hey <@U02KX5B7EVC>, hope you don't mind me reopening this thread again. I have modified and adapted the sources download bit in `source-resolution-demo` to be able to use it as a binary plugin (<https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/plugins.html#sec:types_of_plugins|as a JAR file>), but when trying to run it as part of the build of a sample project, <https://github.com/gradle/source-resolution-demo/blob/main/buildSrc/src/main/java/org/gradle/resolution/plugin/DocsResolutionPlugin.java#L20|the runtimeClasspath variable> is not found:

```* What went wrong:
An exception occurred applying plugin request [id: 'org.konveyor.java.plugin', version: '1.0-SNAPSHOT']
&gt; Failed to apply plugin [id 'org.konveyor.java.plugin']
   &gt; Configuration with name 'runtimeClasspath' not found.```
I have basically included it in my sample project's build file as:
```plugins {
    [...]
    id 'org.konveyor.java.plugin' version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'
}```
which seems to work up to that point...

My first guess is that you need to 'react' to the Java plugin, to ensure that the configuration has been created

<https://docs.gradle.org/8.7/userguide/implementing_gradle_plugins_binary.html#reacting_to_plugins>

So my plugin must be explicitly "aware" of the presence of the Java plugin in order to be able to grab the `runtimeClasspath` config, so to speak

Basically, yes. It's an ordering problem.

Alternatively, you can make your plugin opinionated and make it apply the Java plugin automatically.

```project.pluginManager.apply("java")```
(I think that's right)