Why gradle is throwing error on missing project property

Question

I'm using maven-publish plugin to release an artifact to nexus repository. I don't want to put the actual credentials of my nexus repository in my build.gradle file. So I decided to use project properties like shown below

credentials {
            username "$nexus_username"
            password "$nexus_password"
}

Now I can use gradle publish -Pnexus_username=<myusername> -Pnexus_password=<mypass> to publish my artifact to my nexus repository. But it doesn't make any sense to keep passing this project properties for a normal gradle build. And if I don't pass gradle is throwing an error saying Could not find property 'nexus_username' Anybody know a better approach to solve this.

Answer 1

Found a solution after some digging

if(! hasProperty("nexus_username")){
    ext.nexus_username=""
}
if(! hasProperty("nexus_password")){
    ext.nexus_password=""
}

Here what I'm doing is creating a blank username and password if the project property is not available. But I still feel this is a work around and not the right solution. Please do respond if anybody find a more elegant solution.