Adding a File to the Root of Your Gradle Distribution

A while ago, I needed to write a program that retrieved some information from the database by using SQL queries located in files. I wanted to add a file that would contain the settings of the app, like the port, SID, login and password for the database, but also the location of those queries. The problem was I couldn’t add those settings to a file in the standard src/groovy/resources folder, because when creating a distribution with Gradle ./gradlew distZip the file would be part of the jar, and thus it would be difficult to modify the contents. I was basically after a run-control file, a settings file in the root of my distribution, that I could easily change on each run (if necessary).

Gradle provides several ways to accomplish this:

1. Add the file to src/dist and the file will be put in the root of the distribution after invoking ./gradlew installDist. Any folders you create will also be put in the distribution, so you can create src/dist/config, for example, to put your configuration in, and a folder config will be created in the distribution.

2. Indicate to Gradle that you want a certain file or folder copied:

   applicationDistribution.from('config.properties') {
       into ''
   }
   

3. Use the distribution plugin:

   apply plugin: 'distribution'
   
   distributions {
       main {
           contents {
               from {
                   'settings.groovy'
               }
           }
       }
   }