Using Grape with a custom repository server

Grape is a great thing if you want to write a Groovy script that depends on a third party library: Just add @Grab('groupid:artifactid:version') on top of your script, and the specified Maven artifact will be downloaded and is available at runtime.

However, if you are forced to use a different repository server (like a private Artifactory or Nexus service), the documentation is not very exhaustive.

Grape uses Ivy behind the scenes, so the key is to provide your own custom Ivy settings in a file called ~/.groovy/grapeConfig.xml. In the following example, Grape will use a Maven repository located at http://artifactory.local/libs-release to download artifacts:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ivysettings>
  <settings defaultResolver="downloadGrapes"/>
  <resolvers>
    <chain name="downloadGrapes" returnFirst="true">
      <ibiblio name="artifactory" m2compatible="true" root="http://artifactory.local/libs-release"/>
    </chain>
  </resolvers>
</ivysettings>

(This example is a stripped-down version of the default Grapes settings)