Run-Task Gradle Plugin

One of PaperMC’s developers, Jason Penilla (jpenilla), created a Gradle plugin which saves the tedious task of copying over a freshly build plugin jar to a test server each time you change something. His plugin is called run-task. This is a guide on how to use it for setting up a Paper development server.

Adding the plugin

First, you want to add the plugin to the plugins section in your build script.

build.gradle.kts

plugins {
  // Other plugins
  id("xyz.jpenilla.run-paper") version "2.3.1"
}

You then want to modify the runServer task, by adding the following code:

build.gradle.kts

tasks.runServer {
    minecraftVersion("1.21.4")
}

And that is all! You can now start a development server by running the runServer Gradle task. It will automatically compile and use the latest version of your plugin. Same as with running a normal server for the first time, you will have to accept the EULA the first time you run the runServer task. Your server is located under the run directory in your project’s root.