6.1 Creating Profiles

The idea behind creating a new profile is that you can setup a default set of commands and plugins that are tailored to a particular technology or organisation.

To create a new profile you can use the create-profile command which will create a new empty profile that extends the base profile:

  1. $ grails create-profile mycompany

The above command will create a new profile in the "mycompany" directory where the command is executed. If you start interactive mode within the directory you will get a set of commands for creating profiles:

  1. $ cd mycompany
  2. $ grails
  3. | Enter a command name to run. Use TAB for completion:
  4. grails>
  6. create-command      create-creator-command      create-feature      create-generator-command    create-gradle-command   create-template

The commands are as follows:

  • create-command - creates a new command that will be available from the Grails CLI when the profile is used

  • create-creator-command - creates a command available to the CLI that renders a template (Example: create-controller)

  • create-generator-command - creates a command available to the CLI that renders a template based on a domain class (Example: generate-controller)

  • create-feature - creates a feature that can be used with this profile

  • create-gradle-command - creates a CLI command that can invoke gradle

  • create-template - creates a template that can be rendered by a command

To customize the dependencies for your profile you can specify additional dependencies in profile.yml.

Below is an example profile.yml file:

  1. features:
  2.     defaults:
  3.         - hibernate
  4.         - asset-pipeline
  5. build:
  6.     plugins:
  7.         - org.grails.grails-web
  8.     excludes:
  9.         - org.grails.grails-core
  10. dependencies:
  11.     compile:
  12.         - "org.mycompany:myplugin:1.0.1"

With the above configuration in place you can publish the profile to your local repository with gradle install:

  1. $ gradle install

Your profile is now usable with the create-app command:

  1. $ grails create-app myapp --profile mycompany

With the above command the application will be created with the "mycompany" profile which includes an additional dependency on the "myplugin" plugin and also includes the "hibernate" and "asset-pipeline" features (more on features later).

Note that if you customize the dependency coordinates of the profile (group, version etc.) then you may need to use the fully qualified coordinates to create an application:

  1. $ grails create-app myapp --profile com.mycompany:mycompany:1.0.1