The work on this software project is in no way associated with my employer nor with the role I'm having at my employer. Any requests for changes will be decided upon exclusively by myself based on my personal preferences. I maintain this project as much or as little as my spare time permits.
Gradle plugin that allows to store and access encrypted credentials using password-based encryption (PBE).
The credentials plugin is hosted at the Gradle Plugin Portal.
Recent build scan: https://scans.gradle.com/s/vzlk2e4dnfzge
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One typical use case of the 'gradle.properties' file in the Gradle user home directory is to store credentials, and to reference them from Gradle builds as project properties. This is a very convenient functionality at the cost that, by default, these properties are stored in plain text. It happens quickly that such credentials are exposed accidentally while giving a Gradle presentation or while pair-programming with a colleague.
The credentials plugin provides a parallel functionality to the 'gradle.properties' file to store and access credentials in an encrypted format through a 'gradle.encrypted.properties' files, thereby avoiding that credentials are ever stored in plain text.
The following functionality is provided by the credentials plugin:
- Store encrypted credentials
- Delete encrypted credentials
- Access encrypted credentials from a Gradle build
All access and storage of credentials goes through password-based encryption. The passphrase can either be specified as a project property from the command line, or a default passphrase is used. The JDK encryption algorithm applied is AES using a key that is generated using PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1 from an 8-byte salt, an iteration count of 65536, and a key length of 128 (longer keys require local installation of the JRE Security Extension).
Access to the stored credentials from within a Gradle build happens through the
credentials
project property. All read and write operations to the credentials container
apply the decryption and encryption on the fly. The credentials container never holds any
credentials in their decrypted form.
Please note that the author of this plugin is by far not a security expert. It is also not the primary goal of this plugin to provide high-security encryption, but rather to provide a convenient way to avoid having to store credentials in plain text.
Apply the nu.studer.credentials
plugin to your Gradle project.
plugins {
id 'nu.studer.credentials' version '3.0'
}
Apply the nu.studer.credentials
plugin to your Gradle settings file.
plugins {
id 'nu.studer.credentials' version '3.0'
}
You can store new credentials or update existing credentials through the addCredentials
task. Pass along
the credentials key and value through the task options --key
and --value
. The
credentials are stored in the GRADLE_USER_HOME/gradle.encrypted.properties.
gradle addCredentials --key someKey --value someValue
Optionally, pass along a custom passphrase through the credentialsPassphrase
project property. The
credentials are stored in the passphrase-specific GRADLE_USER_HOME/gradle.MD5HASH.encrypted.properties where the
MD5HASH is calculated from the specified passphrase.
gradle addCredentials --key someKey --value someValue -PcredentialsPassphrase=mySecretPassPhrase
Optionally, pass along a custom directory location of the credentials file through the credentialsLocation
project property.
gradle addCredentials --key someKey --value someValue -PcredentialsLocation=/some/directory
You can remove existing credentials through the removeCredentials
task. Pass along
the credentials key through the --key
project property. The credentials are removed from the
GRADLE_USER_HOME/gradle.encrypted.properties.
gradle removeCredentials --key someKey
Optionally, pass along a custom passphrase through the credentialsPassphrase
project property. The
credentials are removed from the passphrase-specific GRADLE_USER_HOME/gradle.MD5HASH.encrypted.properties where the
MD5HASH is calculated from the specified passphrase.
gradle removeCredentials --key someKey -PcredentialsPassphrase=mySecretPassPhrase
Optionally, pass along a custom directory location of the credentials file through the credentialsLocation
project property.
gradle removeCredentials --key someKey -PcredentialsLocation=/some/directory
Get the desired credentials from the credentials
container, available on the project instance. The
credentials are decrypted as they are accessed.
String accountPassword = credentials.forKey('someAccountPassword')
If no explicit passphrase is passed when starting the build, the credentials
container is initialized with all credentials persisted in the _
GRADLE_USER_HOME/gradle.encrypted.properties_.
If a custom passphrase is passed through the credentialsPassphrase
project property when starting the build, the credentials
container is initialized with all credentials
persisted in the passphrase-specific
GRADLE_USER_HOME/gradle.MD5HASH.encrypted.properties where the MD5HASH is calculated from the specified passphrase.
If a custom directory location is passed through the credentialsLocation
project property when starting the build, the credentials file will be seeked in that directory.
Plugin version | Compatible Gradle versions | Support for Gradle Kotlin DSL | Support for Gradle Configuration Cache | Minimum JDK |
---|---|---|---|---|
3.0+ | 6.0+, 7.0+ | Yes | N/A | 8 |
2.0+ | 6.0+, 7.0+ | No | N/A | 8 |
See the Migration section on how to migrate your build from older to newer credentials plugin versions.
When migrating your build from credentials plugin 2.x to 3.x, follow these steps:
- Access the keys via new
credentials.forKey
API. For example,credentials.forKey('someAccountPassword')
instead ofcredentials.someAccountPassword
. - Remove all usages of setting credentials in your build at runtime. For example,
credentials.someAccountPassword = 'chocolate'
. Instead, use theaddCredentials
Gradle task to make credentials available to the build.
You can find a self-contained example build script here.
The credentials plugin can also be applied to a Gradle settings file. You can find a self-contained example build script here.
Both feedback and contributions are very welcome.
This plugin is available under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
(c) by Etienne Studer