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Software Artisan · Trainer · Gradle Tooling Author

I design an ecosystem of Gradle Kotlin DSL plugins for project tooling, executable documentation, and educational content production. My raw materials: Kotlin, Gradle, AsciiDoc, LangChain4j.

I work at the intersection of three domains:

• Software Craftsmanship — TDD, BDD Cucumber, Hexagonal Architecture, Idiomatic Kotlin.
• Developer Tooling — reusable Gradle plugins, published under the com.cheroliv namespace on the Gradle Plugin Portal.
• EdTech — educational content, generated static sites, traceable training materials.

The coherence of it all stems from a simple conviction: a credible developer/trainer builds and uses their own tools. I don't sell what I don't use on a daily basis.

The lifecycle I follow for each plugin:

1. Business logic prototyping within the root build.gradle.kts, with relevant logs to validate behavior under real conditions.
2. Plugin migration once the domain logic is stable — transplanting the proven code to a dedicated module, using TDD with JUnit 5.
3. BDD with Cucumber as soon as the domain allows, to document intent at the user level.
4. Publication to the Gradle Plugin Portal with a versioned API contract.

It's not a fancy method, but it's one that stands the test of time.

The plugins are structured around three roles:

Each plugin follows the same configuration discipline: declarative YAML (readme.yml, plantuml-context.yml, slides-context.yml…), mirrored Kotlin classes via Jackson, and an anonymization function for traceability without leaking secrets.

A Gradle Kotlin DSL build script that orchestrates the creation of a bootable Xubuntu ISO — functioning as both a live USB and an installer, equipped with the necessary tooling tailored for three usage profiles:

• Nomadic workstation — my complete portable environment on a USB drive.
• FTTH Telecom Technician — ready-to-use field tooling.
• Student/Trainee — immediate onboarding with no prior installation required.

The project illustrates the ecosystem's philosophy: the work environment itself is a reproducible, versioned, and documented artifact. The project's documentation is generated and published by com.cheroliv.bakery at cheroliv.com/magic_stick — proof that the publication pipeline runs in production.

• Intermediate to advanced Java (8 to 25) — from the Stream API to Virtual Threads, Records, Pattern Matching.
• Intermediate to advanced Kotlin — null safety, extensions, coroutines, sealed classes.
• Scala and JVM build alternatives (Mill, sbt).
• Maven multi-module architectures.
• Gradle Kotlin DSL — from writing tasks to publishable plugins.
• Hexagonal Architecture and testing — ports & adapters, JUnit 5, Cucumber, TestContainers.
• Spring Boot — REST APIs, JWT security, integration testing.
• Project tooling — GitHub Actions CI/CD, executable documentation, content generation.

Course materials are produced using the ecosystem's plugins: slides are Reveal.js generated by slider, course websites by bakery, and the bootable drive by magic_stick. Training and tooling mutually feed into each other.

Java · Kotlin · Scala · Gradle (Kotlin DSL) · Mill · JUnit 5 · Cucumber · Spring Boot · AsciiDoc · JBake · Reveal.js · PlantUML · JGit · Jackson · LangChain4j · Docker · PostgreSQL/pgvector · GitHub Actions · Xubuntu/Debian packaging.

• Website: cheroliv.com
• Published Plugins: Gradle Plugin Portal — com.cheroliv
• magic_stick: documentation · repository

The code we write for ourselves is the laboratory for the code we teach others.