This message was deleted.

I hacked around bullet 2:

tasks.register('copySharedObjectsToInstallDir', Copy) { copyTask ->
    tasks.named('installTest').configure {
        it.dependsOn(copyTask)

        copyTask.into it.installDirectory
    }

    from configurations.named('linkDebug')
}

not pretty, but it works- surely there's a better way, though?

Let me try to answer your questions, I will split my answer as a separate message so we can thread each one. There may be a delay in my response for each question as I'm a bit AFK today.