Chainguard Image for gradle

Chainguard Image with Gradle, an open source build system for Java, Android, and Kotlin.

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gradle:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's Gradle image is comparable to the official Gradle image on Docker Hub. Like most other Chainguard images, the Gradle image has few-to-zero CVEs and does not run as the root user. Additionally, the Chainguard Gradle image's default entrypoint is /usr/bin/gradle.

Getting Started

Chainguard Gradle images come with different versions of OpenJDK; ensure you choose the correct image tag for your application needs.

If you are running Docker on Mac M1 you may experience intermittent container high CPU and container / JVM crashes. There have been reports of this behavior, which is known to also affect non-Chainguard images. It is expected that using ARM based images, which are in development for Chainguard images, will address the problem. When running the examples below you might experience Gradle builds hanging. If you do, you can docker ps and docker kill $PID and retry.

To use the Chainguard Gradle image with Docker, run commands that follow this syntax:

docker run cgr.dev/chainguard/gradle:latest-dev <gradle-task>

For example, to run an existing project you have on your local machine, you could run a command like the following:

docker run -v "${PWD}":/home/build/project -w /home/build/project cgr.dev/chainguard/gradle:latest run

To show the Gradle image building and running a sample application, we will use the latest-dev variant of the image, which includes a shell.

First, run the image with the -it and entrypoint=/bin/sh arguments to access the shell:

docker run -it --entrypoint=/bin/sh cgr.dev/chainguard/gradle:latest-dev

From within the container, run the init task to build a Hello World! example application:

gradle init --type java-application --use-defaults

This example specifies that the init task should build a Java application with the default settings.

. . .

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 3s

Then, use the run task to run the newly built application:

gradle run

. . .

> Task :app:run
Hello World!

Documentation and Resources

• Gradle User Manual
• Gradle Build Tool GitHub Repository

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.