Create a directory in Debian file creation task

Question

I have the following gradle task that I use to create a debian archive:

val packDeb by tasks.registering(Deb::class) {
    mkdir("/var/lib/salam/")
}

But I get the following error when I run ./gradlew build

org.gradle.api.UncheckedIOException: Failed to create directory '/var/lib/salam'

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

The mkdir method that you are using is not part of the Deb task (but rather comes from the project object). The method is called at the time your Gradle project is configured, i.e., Gradle tries to create that directory at the time when Gradle starts up. This most likely fails because the user account with which you run Gradle does not have write permissions under /var/lib.

To create that directory when installing the DEB package, you could do something like this:

plugins {
  id("nebula.deb") version "6.2.0"
}
import com.netflix.gradle.plugins.deb.Deb

val packDeb by tasks.registering(Deb::class) {
  into("/")
  // TODO assumes that the (non-empty) "salam" dir is prepared in your
  //      project dir
  from("salam") {
    into("var/lib/salam")
  }
}