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<p>There are various options for compiling Groovy code and then either running it or using the Java objects it creates in Java code.</p>

<h2>Compling Groovy code to bytecode using a script</h2>

<p>There is an Ant task called <strong>groovyc</strong> which works pretty similarly to the <strong>javac</strong> Ant task which takes a bunch of groovy source files and compiles them into Java bytecode. Each groovy class then just becomes a normal Java class you can use inside your Java code if you wish.<br />
Indeed the generated Java class is indistinguishable from a normal Java class, other than it implements the<br />
<a href="http://groovy.codehaus.org/api/groovy/lang/GroovyObject.html"><strong>GroovyObject</strong></a> interface.</p>

<h2>Compiling Groovy code to bytecode using Ant and Maven</h2>

<p>The <a class="confluence-link" href="/display/GROOVY/The+groovyc+Ant+Task" data-linked-resource-id="32704" data-linked-resource-type="page" data-linked-resource-default-alias="The groovyc Ant Task" data-base-url="http://docs.codehaus.org">groovyc</a> Ant task is implemented by the <a href="http://groovy.codehaus.org/gapi/org/codehaus/groovy/ant/Groovyc.html">Groovyc</a> class. You can see an example of this in action inside Groovy's maven.xml file (just search for 'groovyc')</p>

<p>There is also an excellent <a href="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-pg11094/">article on DeveloperWorks</a><br />
which will show you how to compile Groovy code from within Maven, similarly to what is done with Ant.</p>

<p>You can also use the Ant task <a class="confluence-link" href="/display/GROOVY/Compiling+With+Maven2" data-linked-resource-id="51235" data-linked-resource-type="page" data-linked-resource-default-alias="Compiling With Maven2" data-base-url="http://docs.codehaus.org">from within Maven2</a>, or the <a href="http://mojo.codehaus.org/groovy/">groovy-maven-plugin </a></p>

<h2>Dynamically using Groovy inside Java applications</h2>

<p>If you don't want to explicitly compile groovy code to bytecode you can just <a class="confluence-link" href="/display/GROOVY/Embedding+Groovy" data-linked-resource-id="2752" data-linked-resource-type="page" data-linked-resource-default-alias="Embedding Groovy" data-base-url="http://docs.codehaus.org">embed groovy</a> directly into your Java application.</p>

<h2>Runtime dependencies</h2>

<p>As well as Java 1.4, or above, and the Groovy jar we also depend at runtime on the ASM library (asm and asm-tree mainly), as well as Antlr. You can also use the groovy-all-xxx.jar from your GROOVY_HOME/embeddable directory, which embeds ASM and Antlr in its own namespace, to avoid Jar version hell.</p>