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Hey. I stumbled upon this answer <https://stackove...

Andrzej Zabost

05/23/2025, 1:15 PM

Hey. I stumbled upon this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/78936660/6761823: > Modern Gradle Behavior: > • Gradle now automatically includes a clean task that targets the

buildDir

directory in each project (including the top-level project). but it doesn't seem to be the case when I'm testing it in my project running Gradle 8.10.2. If I delete the custom

clean

task registered in the top-level

build.gradle.kts

file:

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tasks.register("clean", Delete::class) {
    delete(rootProject.layout.buildDirectory)
}

then run

./gradlew clean --dry-run

, I can't see the top-level

clean

task on the list. If I restore the custom

clean

task in

build.gradle.kts

and re-run that command, the task is listed as expected. So it doesn't seem to be true that "modern Gradle automatically includes this task for top-level project". Can someone clarify if I'm expected to manually register a

clean

task in root

build.gradle.kts

or is this practice deprecated in favor of something else?

Chris Lee

05/23/2025, 1:38 PM

Running

./gradlew clean

isn’t directly running the “clean” task; it runs clean for all projects (including root) in which that task exists. Any project that directly/indirectly applies the

LifecycleBasePlugin

will have the clean task registered. If your root project doesn’t apply plugins it won’t have a clean task (and may not need one if it isn’t doing any work).

➕ 1

Chris Lee

05/23/2025, 1:39 PM

For reference, the default clean task is defined as:

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private void addClean(final ProjectInternal project) {
        Provider<Directory> buildDir = project.getLayout().getBuildDirectory();

        // Register at least the project buildDir as a directory to be deleted.
        final BuildOutputCleanupRegistry buildOutputCleanupRegistry = project.getServices().get(BuildOutputCleanupRegistry.class);
        buildOutputCleanupRegistry.registerOutputs(buildDir);

        final Provider<Delete> clean = project.getTasks().register(CLEAN_TASK_NAME, Delete.class, cleanTask -> {
            cleanTask.setDescription("Deletes the build directory.");
            cleanTask.setGroup(BUILD_GROUP);
            cleanTask.delete(buildDir);
        });
        buildOutputCleanupRegistry.registerOutputs(clean.map(cl -> cl.getTargetFiles()));
    }

ephemient

05/23/2025, 2:06 PM

the base plugin also adds a task rule so that there will be a

cleanFoo

for every

foo

task

Andrzej Zabost

05/23/2025, 3:09 PM

When I was playing with

--configuration-cache

I noticed the root's

build

directory contained some configuration cache related report so, naturally, I would expect it to be cleaned after running

clean

task, but like you said, it doesn't seem to be registered automatically if no plugins are applied to the root project.

👍 1

Vampire

05/24/2025, 10:19 PM

Yeah, you can just apply the

lifecycle-base

plugin, that is enough to get the task that deletes the configured build directory exactly like with your custom task, or you register your custom task, doesn't make that much of a difference. 🙂

🙌 1

Vampire

05/24/2025, 10:31 PM

And it is also the

lifecycle-base

plugin that adds the

...Clean

task rule btw. 🙂

Vampire

05/24/2025, 10:50 PM

Actually, I consider this a bug or at least worth a feature request, I created https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/33609 for it. 🙂

🙌 1

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