As Grails adoption grows within an organization, it is likely that over time different projects will end up running on different Grails versions. Consequently, developers will need to ensure they have corresponding runtime enabled within their environment. That is exactly what GVM Tool is meant to do. Unfortunately for many corporate users there is a little pesky obstacle to its use: Windows.

When it comes to this operating system, GVM is (understandably) supported via Cygwin only. The problem is that Grails shell is still little rough around the edges within the emulator. Also, Cygwin itself may be a forbidden fruit due to internal corporate policies.

Under these conditions, developers basically have to resort to manual modifications of system variables like GRAILS_HOME and PATH. Which is a mundane and annoying task. To make our lives easier, we have put together Gravy – a simple batch script that manages local (manually installed) Grails versions within the Windows native shell. If you are in the same shoes, give it a spin.