The Wowza Gradle Plugin is an equally valuable tool in the current media streaming development, as it gives direct tools to the application developers as they work with the Wowza Streaming Engine. This plugin is the missing link between current build automations and media server development and which makes it easy for teams to manage their streaming projects.
Understanding the Basics
The Wowza Gradle Plugin enhances the functionality of the fast-growing build system called Gradle to fit well with the Wowza-based applications. It delivers a range of ready-made tasks and configurations geared towards Wowza Streaming Engine modules. So, developers will spend more time on their streaming logic, not build logic.
Core Features and Functionality
The plugin contained several significant elements that enhance Wowza module creation. It has capabilities of dependency management, Java source code compilation and packaging of Wowza modules in right format.
The plugin also handles generation on-demand of certain manifest files and the correct nesting of resources within the module hierarchy.
Project Configuration
The foundation for running a project with the Wowza Gradle Plugin is the setup in the build gradle file, where the plugin is provided and basic properties are set. The plugin familiarization process only involves few categories, common to almost all modules, namely the module name, its version, and optionally the required Wowza versions. This remarkably simple setup procedure enables the developers to start working on their streaming applications as soon as possible.
Dependency Management
In this case, one of the greatest strengths observable on the plugin’s application is its management of dependencies. It gets integrated to the Wowza-specific libraries and handles the dependencies between the various versions on its own.
Still, this capability is crucial for avoiding connection when attempting solutions based on dependency management and for ensuring that the final module will include all the required components.
Development Workflow Enhancement
One thing that developers can take advantage is that the plugin enhances most of the Gradle tasks available. It enables organizations to retain the other development functions they originally utilized while at the same time incorporating Wowza features.
Deployment Support
Some of the plugin features are used in deploying modules in Wowza Streaming Engine instances. It is irrespective of local or remote deployment and that makes it convenient when testing & deploying modules between different environments. This capability brings down the cycle greatly and the development to production process.
Testing Integration
Facing tests are made easier by the fact that the plugin integrates with common Java testing frameworks. It sets up test class path & dependencies well that enables developers write and run Unit Tests for their ‘Wowza’ modules well.
Performance Optimization
The build performance is made better by how the plugin disposes tasks and dependences of a project. It also has compile time reduction utilizing Gradle’s incremental build property which means that any modification will have to compile only the relevant parts. This optimization also reduces precious time when conducting development especially in the large projects.
