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One other thing to note is that, in this particular case,

theTask

is a lifecycle task and is actually supposed to be invoked by user (be it a human or CI server), but I am actually looking for general recommendations.

I would think that you always register the task, but in a

doFirst{}

you can check if the conditions to actually execute the task are fulfilled. If not, throw an exception to fail the build before the task is executed.

there's also

enabled = false

(eagerly configured) and

onlyIf { false }

(lazily evaluated) to ensure that the task is not executed