Gradle and Spring Boot

What is Gradle : 

Gradle is a project automation tool that builds upon the concepts of Apache Ant and Apache Maven and introduces a Groovy-based domain-specific language (DSL) instead of the more traditional XML form of declaring the project configuration.

First of all, Gradle is a dependency programming tool which also means it's a programming tool. With Gradle you can execute any random task in your setup and Gradle will make sure all declared dependecies are properly and timely executed. Your code can be spread across many directories in any kind of layout (tree, flat, scattered, ...).

Gradle was designed for multi-project builds which can grow to be quite large, and supports incremental builds by intelligently determining which parts of the build tree are up-to-date, so that any task dependent upon those parts will not need to be re-executed.

And what is Spring Boot : 
Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Features

• Create stand-alone Spring applications
• Embed Tomcat, Jetty or Undertow directly (no need to deploy WAR files)
• Provide opinionated 'starter' POMs to simplify your Maven configuration
• Automatically configure Spring whenever possible
• Provide production-ready features such as metrics, health checks and externalized configuration
• Absolutely no code generation and no requirement for XML configuration

Using spring boot with gradle 

Gradle users can directly import “starter POMs” in their dependencies section. Unlike Maven, there is no “super parent” to import to share some configuration.

apply plugin: 'java'

repositories { jcenter() }
dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT")
}

The spring-boot-gradle-plugin is also available and provides tasks to create executable jars and run projects from source. It also provides dependency management that, among other capabilities, allows you to omit the version number for any dependencies that are managed by Spring Boot:

buildscript {
    repositories { jcenter() }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot.spring-boot'

repositories { jcenter() }
dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}