Using IDEA to Delegate Build And Run Actions To Gradle

IntelliJ IDEA 2016.3 introduces the option to delegate the IDE build and run actions to Gradle. So if we invoke the Build Project action from the Buildmenu IntelliJ IDEA invokes the correct tasks using Gradle. Also the Run and Debug actions from the Run menu are executed with Gradle.

If we want this behaviour we need to changed the preferences of IntelliJ IDEA. We must open the preferences dialog window and then go to Build, Execution, Deployment | Build Tools | Gradle | Runner. Here we check the option Delegate IDE build/run actions to gradle and we close the window:

Let's open a simple Java project with a Gradle build file in IDEA. Next we invoke the Build Project action with the shortcut key Cmd+F9 (on macOS, other operating systems probably have a different shortcut key). Our code is compiled and we can open the Run view to see the output:

We have a Java class in our project with a main method we want to run. We use the Run action (for example using the shortcut key Ctrl+R on macOS) and IDEA uses Gradle's JavaExec task to run the class. Also this time we can see the output in the 

 method we want to run. We use the Run action (for example using the shortcut key Ctrl+R on macOS) and IDEA uses Gradle's JavaExec task to run the class. Also this time we can see the output in the Run view:

Written with Gradle 3.2 and IntelliJ IDEA 2016.3.