TeamCity Plugin Development with Gradle

Step 1 - Set up the environment

To develop a plugin for TeamCity, first set up a plugin development environment.

Download and install Oracle Java. Java 1.8 is required for TeamCity 10.
Download and install a Java IDE that has Gradle integration
Download and install Gradle. Follow the Gradle installation instructions.

A TeamCity installation is not needed at this point and will be downloaded and installed later using a task provided by the Gradle TeamCity plugin.

Step 2 - Generate a Gradle project

Unlike Maven, Gradle doesn’t have archetype support so the initial project structure will be created using Gradle’s init task and the plugin files will be manually created.

Create a directory called demoPlugin, change into the directory and execute the following command to create a Gradle project

$GRADLE_HOME/bin/gradle init

Note: On Windows use the gradle.bat command

View the project structure

After the command finishes the directory contains the following files:

the build.gradle file containing a commented-out sample Java project
the settings.gradle file
the gradlew file to run Gradle on Linux and OS X
the gradlew.bat file to run Gradle on Windows
the gradle directory contains the Gradle wrapper used to run Gradle

Open the project in an IDE

Edit the build.gradle file and replace the contents with the following

plugins {
  id 'java'
  id 'com.github.rodm.teamcity-server' version '0.9.1'
}

group = 'com.demoDomain.teamcity.demoPlugin'
version = '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

teamcity {
    version = '10.0'
}

The contents of the settings.gradle file should set the project name as shown

rootProject.name = 'demoPlugin'

Step 3 - Edit the plugin descriptor

The Gradle plugin supports defining the plugin descriptor in a separate file or in the build file. For this example the descriptor will be defined in the build.gradle file. Add the following 'server' configuration block containing the plugin descriptor to the build file.

teamcity {
    version = '10.0'

    server {
        descriptor {
            name = project.name
            displayName = 'Demo Plugin'
            version = project.version
            vendorName = 'Demo Vendor'
            description = 'Demo plugin description'
            useSeparateClassloader = false
        }
    }
}

Using the inline descriptor allows the descriptor to use property values generated during the build such as a version number or a build timestamp.

Step 4 - Create the plugin sources

Create the following directories for the Java source and plugin resources

src/main/java
src/main/resources/META-INF
src/main/resources/buildServerResources

A. Create the plugin web-resources

In the buildServerResources directory create the Hello.jsp file. Enter the contents as shown in the TeamCity documentation

B. Create the controller and obtain the path to the JSP

In the src/main/java directory create the sub-directories com/demoDomain/teamcity/demoPlugin then create the AppServer.java file. Enter the contents as shown in the TeamCity documentation

C. Update the Spring bean definition

In the src/main/resources/META-INF directory create the file build-server-plugin-demo-plugin.xml and enter the contents as shown in the TeamCity documentation

Step 6 - Install the plugin to TeamCity

To install and start a TeamCity instance edit the build.gradle file adding an 'environments' configuration block as shown.

teamcity {
    server {
        descriptor {
            ...
        }

        environments {
            teamcity10 {
                version = '10.0.2'
            }
        }
    }
}

Run ./gradlew tasks to see the new tasks available to download and install TeamCity, tasks to start and stop the server and agent, and tasks to deploy and undeploy the plugin.

To download and install TeamCity for the environment, execute the following command, note this will take some time.

./gradlew installTeamcity10

To deploy the plugin and start the server execute the following command

./gradlew startTeamcity10Server

The first time the TeamCity Server is started a database connection must be selected, the license agreement accepted and an administrator account setup. Select 'Internal HSQLDB' for the database type.

The TeamCity Demo Plugin should appear in Administration|Plugins List.

The Hello World page is available via http://localhost:8111/demoPlugin.html.

Completed examples of the build files can be downloaded from the following links build.gradle and settings.gradle