How to exclude a gradle task or method during build

Question

I defined a task that reads the property file and updates a certain field. I want this to run only when I execute 'release' and not during 'build'.

I am using this gradle-release plugin for release : https://github.com/researchgate/gradle-release

This plugin updates the version in the gradle.properties file to the next version, on every release. I need to keep the current version number as well, and hence I wrote this method.

However, this task is getting executed whenever I do a build. I tried to change it to a method, and call the method within 'uploadArchives' which I presume runs only during 'release'. Yet no result. It keeps on executing on every build!

How do I exclude it from 'build' and invoke it only in case of release ?

Here is the task and some code snippets :

task restoreCurrentVersion {
    try {
        String key = 'currentVersion'
        File propertiesFile = project(':commons').file("gradle.properties")
        String currentVersion = project(':commons').version
        this.ant.replaceregexp(file: propertiesFile, byline: true) {
            regexp(pattern: "^(\\s*)$key(\\s*)=(\\s*).+")
            substitution(expression: "\\1$key\\2=\\3$currentVersion")
        }
    } catch (BuildException be) {
        throw new GradleException('Unable to write version property.', be)
    }
}

uploadArchives {
    repositories.mavenDeployer {
        repository(url: 'file://Users/my.home/.m2/repository/')
    }
 //   restoreCurrentVersion()   //Uncommenting this makes the method (when converted the above task to a method) to execute always
}

createReleaseTag.dependsOn uploadArchives    
ext.'release.useAutomaticVersion' = "true"

Answer 1

1. You need to add a << or a doLast block to your task definition. Otherwise it will run during the configuration phase, which is pretty much every time you run any other task. see here: Why is my Gradle task always running?

2. There is no gradle way to invoke/call a task from another task directly like you attempted to do in uploadArchives instead you use dependsOn or finalizedBy to setup task dependencies. If uploadArchives depends on restoreCurrentVersion , restoreCurrentVersion will be called first everytime uploadArchives is called.