Gradle and the parent pom
We've all got used to various maven features that we have come to rely on, and in my effort to migrate to Gradle I have endeavoured to find alternative replacments, one of which is the parent POM functionality. Gradle does not natively have this feature that as Maven users we rely on. Workarounds There are a number of workarounds documented, firstly the most common is to use the apply from to load a file from a URI (you can use a URL) but this is not ideal for many reasons. The alternative is to write your own plugin that alters your build.gradle file. Anorakgirl has a great write-up on how to do this here Gradle and the parent POM and is the inspiration for my plugin. Gradle pater-build plugin I love Anorakgirls write up but I was thinking that it really is a workaround and devs would need to start to understand the internal Gradle API, so if the apply from syntax has its short comings as Anorakgirl pointed out then how about subverting or working around them. I created