How to work with gradle wrapper, init script, multi project and best with idea

Question

to sum up the components and environment:

• multi-project, typically each gradle project is soley in a seperate git
  • you don't want to use submodules
• gradle init scripts in a seperate config / super repository
• using gradle wrapper
• for the GUI guy: IntelliJ IDEa with Gradle integratiom -> help
• allowed to use gradle idea -> guide

so,

Q: How to elegant marriage these components. How can I define an init script to be used in the wrapper of a single repository without affecting other repositories.

I know:

• init scripts are typical in a "GRADLE_HOME" directory
• init scripts can be defined per console via -I
  (yes, I read the documentation 😅 )

Problems found:

• intelliJ doesn't allow to define the -I option in UI
• anyone needs to checkout and update a seperate repository if you want to share between projects
• the settings.gradle || gradle.properties file seems not to support any option either

Constraints: (while these are possible answers, they are neither elegant nor fault proof)

• the desired solution should be applicable for SINGLE projects, and should not be globally applied to all projects on the same computer

Hidden Questions:

• can I include global gradle settings from an URL so noone needs a clone of the meta-repo??
• does an URL include do the same as an init script? Or what you can do with initScript what you can't in include?

Answer 1

You can do the following:

1. Create a custom gradle distribution with the common settings defined in the init script
2. Configure your projects to use that distribution through the distributionUrl key in the gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties
3. Use regular gradle build from command line/usual import into intellij - it just works

By the way, there is a gradle plugin for simplifying custom gradle distribution construction