Chapter 43. The Distribution Plugin

The distribution plugin is incubating (see Section C.1.2, “Incubating”).

The distribution plugin extends the language plugins with common distribution related tasks. It allows bundling a project including binaries, sources and documentation.

43.1. Usage

To use the distribution plugin, include in your build script:

Example 43.1. Using the distribution plugin

build.gradle

apply plugin: 'distribution'

To define the name for the distribution you have to set the baseName property as shown below

Example 43.2. Configure the distribution name

build.gradle

distributions {
    main {
        baseName = 'my-name'
    }
}

The plugin build a distribution for your project. You can run gradle distZip to create a ZIP containing the distribution. Given that the project name is myproject and version is 1.2, then running gradle customDistZip will produce a ZIP file called myproject-1.2.zip

43.2. Tasks

The Distribution plugin adds the following tasks to the project.

Table 43.1. Distribution plugin - tasks

Task name	Depends on	Type	Description
`distZip`	`-`	`Zip`	Creates a full distribution ZIP archive.
`distTar`	`-`	`Tar`	Creates a full distribution TAR archive.
`installDist`	`-`	`Sync`	Install distribution contents.

43.3. Configure distributions

The distribution plugin allow to configure distributions to include custom files and to change distribution baseName.

Example 43.3. Declare multiple distributions

build.gradle

apply plugin: 'distribution'

distributions {
    main {
        baseName = 'someName'
        contents {
            from { 'src/dist' }
        }
    }
}

43.4. Multiple distributions

The distribution plugin allow to generate multiple distributions.

Example 43.4. Declare multiple distributions

build.gradle

apply plugin: 'distribution'

version = '1.2'
distributions {
    custom {
        contents {
            from { 'src/dist' }
        }
    }
}

This will following tasks to the project : customDistZip, customDistTar, installcustomDist. Given that the project name is myproject, then running gradle customDistZip will produce a ZIP file called myproject-custom-1.2.zip and running customDistTar will produce myproject-custom-1.2.tar. Running installcustomDist will install distribution contents into buildDir/install/custom.

43.5. Extension properties

The distribution plugin add an extension to the project, which you can use to configure its behaviour. See Project.