Why does gradle not run my shell script?

Question

I'm almost certain i am overlooking something.

I have an android gradle project with a build.gradle file. Inside here, I specify the task:

task doSomething(type: Exec) {
    println("okay clearly you have got to be getting in here")
    commandLine 'sh /Users/dzt/Desktop/create_a_file_on_desktop.sh'
}

and that doesn't run at all. the shell file just literally does:

#!/bin/sh
echo "hi" > /Users/dzt/Desktop/i_am_a_byproduct.txt

and i ran chmod u+x on it so it is executable (i double checked on regular bash shell).

I also tried to use the groovy command:

"cd ../ && sh /Users/dzt/Desktop/create_a_file_on_desktop.sh".execute()

which does not work either. I'm a little stumped. i do NOT see the output file. however, i do see my print statement in the gradle console.

What is going on here?

** EDIT **

okay, i drilled it down more ->

cd ../ does not work at all. why is this? i need to use a relative path, at least relative to this directory

Answer 1

The call must be

commandLine 'sh', '/Users/dzt/Desktop/create_a_file_on_desktop.sh'

or else this is considered one command. But you want to start the sh with the script as param. On the other hand, since you have set the execute-bit, you can as well just call the shell script directly.

See http://gradle.org/docs/current/dsl/org.gradle.api.tasks.Exec.html

Running cd like you want with cd ../ && sh script does also not work like this, since && is a shell script command. If you want to run like this, you have to run the shell and make it run as a command. E.g.

commandLine 'sh', '-c', 'cd ~/scripts && sh myscript.sh'