How to pass JVM options from bootRun

Original Answer (using Gradle 1.12 and Spring Boot 1.0.x):

The bootRun task of the Spring Boot gradle plugin extends the gradle JavaExec task. See this.

That means that you can configure the plugin to use the proxy by adding:

bootRun {
   jvmArgs = "-Dhttp.proxyHost=xxxxxx", "-Dhttp.proxyPort=xxxxxx"
}

to your build file.

Of course you could use the systemProperties instead of jvmArgs

If you want to conditionally add jvmArgs from the command line you can do the following:

bootRun {
    if ( project.hasProperty('jvmArgs') ) {
        jvmArgs project.jvmArgs.split('\\s+')
    }
}

gradle bootRun -PjvmArgs="-Dwhatever1=value1 -Dwhatever2=value2"

Updated Answer:

After trying out my solution above using Spring Boot 1.2.6.RELEASE and Gradle 2.7 I observed that it was not working as some of the comments mention. However, a few minor tweaks can be made to recover the working state.

The new code is:

bootRun {
   jvmArgs = ["-Dhttp.proxyHost=xxxxxx", "-Dhttp.proxyPort=xxxxxx"]
}

for hard-coded arguments, and

bootRun {
    if ( project.hasProperty('jvmArgs') ) {
        jvmArgs = (project.jvmArgs.split("\\s+") as List)

    }
}

for arguments provided from the command line

bootRun {
  // support passing -Dsystem.property=value to bootRun task
  systemProperties = System.properties
}

This should pass all JVM options to the app started via bootRun.