Create A Directory Before Several Gradle Tasks

Question

I have several tasks that require a sub-directory of build to exist.

What is the best way to achieve this?

So far I have this:

afterEvaluate {
    mkdir "$buildDir/work"
}

And this:

task prepareDirs {
    mkdir "$buildDir/test"
}

The second one works because it is run in the configuration phase and so I don't need to put dependsOn on all the tasks that require it.

• Are there other options?
• Is mkdir even the right way to do it?
• At what point is the buildDir created? Can I extend that task?

EDIT: I noticed that both of these fail if I chain the clean task on the command line before my main tasks.

Answer 1

The following should work. Note that prepareDirs must have constraint mustRunAfter clean, to solve the issue you mentioned in your EDIT

// task responsible to create the tmp/work dir
task prepareDirs {
    mustRunAfter clean
    doLast {
        mkdir "$buildDir/work"
    }
}

// make all tasks depend on the prepareDirs task
// exept 'clean' and 'prepareDirs' (avoid circular dependency)
tasks.each {
    if (it != prepareDirs && it != clean) {
        it.dependsOn prepareDirs
    }
}

If you don't have much tasks that require the build/work dir and don't want to make all tasks depend on you prepareDirs task, you can do that :

[myTask1, myTask2, myTask3].each {
    it.dependsOn prepareDirs
}