After switching to gradle 2.3 for wrapper I am noticing a lot more goals being added from application plugin and included as part of the build process. Its creating zip files, tar files, doing script related stuff for all subprojects. This is not the intended behavior. I would like to keep it the way it was before such that unless I explicitly specify the application plugin goals like distZip, they shouldnt be invoked as part of my gradle build.
This behaviour's caused by Spring Boot's Gradle plugin. I've opened an issue. I don't fully understand why the switching from Gradle 2.2 to 2.3 triggers a change in behaviour, but your best bet at the moment would appear to be to stick with Gradle 2.2.