topic: Gradle and IntelliJ project submission structure

When pushing your work to git it’s important to be intentional about what you are pushing. When you build your java project and/or run your tests then certain files get created automatically. We don’t want those files. We should be able to generate them ourselves whenever we want to.

When you commit your code to git, you can tell git which files to ignore. You can do this though use of a .gitignore file. We’ve included a seriously verbose gitignore file at the bottom of this document. Please just copy it and save it as a file named.gitignore in the root of your project.

Now if you did this right from the start you should be able to do something like this:

git add .
git commit -m "a useful and informative message"
git push

Now let’s see if it all worked out. Try cloning your code yourself and see what git knows about:

cd somewhere_nice
git clone <your github repo> temporary_copy
cd temporary_copy
tree  # you might need to: `sudo apt install tree`

This should output something neat and tidy. Eg from one of our many calculator projects you would see something that looks like this:

├── gradle
│   └── wrapper
│       ├── gradle-wrapper.jar
│       └── gradle-wrapper.properties
├── gradlew
├── gradlew.bat
├── settings.gradle
└── app
    ├── build.gradle
    └── src
        ├── main
        │   └── java
        │       └── Calculator.java
        └── test
            └── java
                └── CalculatorTest.java

Now you can run these commands and they should work:

 ./gradlew build
 ./gradlew test

Troubleshooting

If the directory structure that githb is tracking is huge and crazy looking then that’s because you committed things before adding .gitignore to your project. That’s totally ok! We can fix it like so:

git rm -r -cached .
git add .
git status # this should tell yu about a whole big pile of deleted files. This is expected
git commit -m "cleaned up junk files"
git push

Now take a look at what github knows about. Everything should be looking clean and tidy and if you clone your code it should just work.

Massive and very thorough gitignore file

Please copy this into your projects and save it as .gitignore:



# Created by https://www.gitignore.io/api/java,gradle,intellij
# Edit at https://www.gitignore.io/?templates=java,gradle,intellij

### Intellij ###
# Covers JetBrains IDEs: IntelliJ, RubyMine, PhpStorm, AppCode, PyCharm, CLion, Android Studio and WebStorm
# Reference: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544839

# User-specific stuff
.idea/
.idea/**/workspace.xml
.idea/**/tasks.xml
.idea/**/usage.statistics.xml
.idea/**/dictionaries
.idea/**/shelf

# Generated files
.idea/**/contentModel.xml

# Sensitive or high-churn files
.idea/**/dataSources/
.idea/**/dataSources.ids
.idea/**/dataSources.local.xml
.idea/**/sqlDataSources.xml
.idea/**/dynamic.xml
.idea/**/uiDesigner.xml
.idea/**/dbnavigator.xml

# Gradle
.idea/**/gradle.xml
.idea/**/libraries

# Gradle and Maven with auto-import
# When using Gradle or Maven with auto-import, you should exclude module files,
# since they will be recreated, and may cause churn.  Uncomment if using
# auto-import.
# .idea/modules.xml
# .idea/*.iml
# .idea/modules
# *.iml
# *.ipr

# CMake
cmake-build-*/

# Mongo Explorer plugin
.idea/**/mongoSettings.xml

# File-based project format
*.iws

# IntelliJ
out/

# mpeltonen/sbt-idea plugin
.idea_modules/

# JIRA plugin
atlassian-ide-plugin.xml

# Cursive Clojure plugin
.idea/replstate.xml

# Crashlytics plugin (for Android Studio and IntelliJ)
com_crashlytics_export_strings.xml
crashlytics.properties
crashlytics-build.properties
fabric.properties

# Editor-based Rest Client
.idea/httpRequests

# Android studio 3.1+ serialized cache file
.idea/caches/build_file_checksums.ser

### Intellij Patch ###
# Comment Reason: https://github.com/joeblau/gitignore.io/issues/186#issuecomment-215987721

# *.iml
# modules.xml
# .idea/misc.xml
# *.ipr

# Sonarlint plugin
.idea/**/sonarlint/

# SonarQube Plugin
.idea/**/sonarIssues.xml

# Markdown Navigator plugin
.idea/**/markdown-navigator.xml
.idea/**/markdown-navigator/

### Java ###
# Compiled class file
*.class

# Log file
*.log

# BlueJ files
*.ctxt

# Mobile Tools for Java (J2ME)
.mtj.tmp/

# Package Files #
*.jar
*.war
*.nar
*.ear
*.zip
*.tar.gz
*.rar

# virtual machine crash logs, see http://www.java.com/en/download/help/error_hotspot.xml
hs_err_pid*

### Gradle ###
.gradle
build/

# Ignore Gradle GUI config
gradle-app.setting

# Avoid ignoring Gradle wrapper jar file (.jar files are usually ignored)
!gradle-wrapper.jar

# Cache of project
.gradletasknamecache

# # Work around https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-116898
# gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties

### Gradle Patch ###
**/build/

# End of https://www.gitignore.io/api/java,gradle,intellij
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