Gradle and Intellij IDEA - garsue/libgdx GitHub Wiki

You just generated your libgdx project, now it's time to start developing its guts in Intellij IDEA! Before you can import your project into Intellij, make sure you setup your development environment!

Importing Your Project

Go to Import Project, navigate to your project folder and select the build.gradle file. Hit OK. In the next dialog, leave all settings as they are and hit OK again. Intellij IDEA will now import your project. This can take a while on the first time, as it downloads the Gradle wrapper and some dependencies.

Common Problems

If you run into problems due to a missing validation-api:1.0.0.GA artifact, delete your Maven cache at C:\Users\username\.m2 or /Users/username/.m2 or /home/username/.m2.

Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 may occur on Mac OS X. Check out this article by Serapth detailing how to solve this issue.

Running Your Project

  • Desktop: Run -> Edit Configurations..., click the plus (+) button and select Application. Set the Nameto Desktop.Set the field Use classpath of module to desktop, then click on the button of the Main class field and select the DesktopLauncher class. Set the Working directory to your android/assets/ folder! Click Apply and then OK. You have now created a run configuration for your desktop project. You can now select the configuration and run it.

  • Android: A configuration for the Android project should be automatically created on project import. As such, you only have to select the configuration and run it!

  • iOS: Run -> Edit Configurations..., click the plus (+) button and select Gradle. Set the Name to iOS, set the Gradle Project to ios, set the Tasks to launchIPhoneSimulator (alternatives are launchIPadSimulator and launchIOSDevicefor provisioned devices). Click Apply and then OK. You have now created a run configuration for your iOS project. You can now select the configuration and run it. The first run will take a bit longer as RoboVM has to compile the entire JDK for iOS. Subsequent runs will compile considerably faster!

  • HTML: View -> Tool Window -> Terminal, in the terminal, make sure you are in the root folder of your project. Then execute gradlew.bat html:superDev (Windows) or ./gradlew html:superDev (Linux, Windows). This will take a while, as your Java code is compiled to Javascript. Once you see the message The code server is ready, fire up your browser and go to http://localhost:8080/html. This is your app running in the browser! When you change any of your Java code or assets, just click the SuperDev refresh button while you are on the site and the server will recompile your code and reload the page! To kill the process, simply press CTRL + C in the terminal window.

Once this bug in the Gradle tooling API is fixed, we can simplify running the HTML5 by using the Gradle integration. At the moment, the Gradle process will run forever even if canceled.

Debugging Your Project

Follow the steps for running the project, but instead of launching via the run (Play) button, launch your configuration via the debug (bug) button. Note that RoboVM currently does not support debugging. Debuggin of the html build can be done in the browser as follows:

Run the superDev Gradle task as before. Go to http://localhost:8080/html, click on the SuperDev Refresh button and hit Compile. In Chrome, press F12 to bring up the developer tools, go to the sources tab and find the Java file you want to debug. Set breakpoints, step and inspect variables using the power of source maps!

super dev mode

Packaging your Project

It's easiest to package your application from the command line, or using the Gradle task within Intellij IDEA. To see the relevant Gradle tasks, check the Gradle command line documentation.