How to copy directory via scp within gradle task?

Question

What is a clean and elegant way to copy a bunch of files via scp with Gradle?

Two ways I currently see are:

• Using Apache Wagon, as described here: http://markmail.org/message/2tmtaffayhq25g4s
• Executing scp via command line with the Exec task

Are there any better (more obvious) ways to approach this?

Answer 1

A few years after the original question, I like the Gradle SSH Plugin. A small quote of its extensive documentation:

We can describe SSH operations in the session closure.

session(remotes.web01) {
  // Execute a command
  def result = execute 'uptime'

  // Any Gradle methods or properties are available in a session closure
  copy {
    from "src/main/resources/example"
    into "$buildDir/tmp"
  }

  // Also Groovy methods or properties are available in a session closure
  println result
}

Following methods are available in a session closure.

• execute - Execute a command.
• executeBackground - Execute a command in background.
• executeSudo - Execute a command with sudo support.
• shell - Execute a shell.
• put - Put a file or directory into the remote host.
• get - Get a file or directory from the remote host.

...and allows for, for example:

task deploy(dependsOn: war) << {
  ssh.run {
    session(remotes.staging) {
      put from: war.archivePath.path, into: '/webapps'
      execute 'sudo service tomcat restart'
    }
  }
}

Answer 2

From a project of mine that I use to SCP files to an EC2 server. The jar files there are local files that are part of my project, I forget where I got them from. There's probably a more concise way of doing all this, but I like to be very explicit in my build scripts.

configurations {
  sshAntTask
}

dependencies {
  sshAntTask fileTree(dir:'buildSrc/lib', include:'jsch*.jar')
  sshAntTask fileTree(dir:'buildSrc/lib', include:'ant-jsch*.jar')
}

ant.taskdef(
  name: 'scp',
  classname: 'org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.ssh.Scp',
  classpath: configurations.sshAntTask.asPath)

task uploadDbServer() {
  doLast  {
    ant.scp(
      file: '...',
      todir: '...',
      keyfile: '...' )
  }
}