Cleanup should delete only contents of buildDir in Multi-project build

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1

Hi,
I want to retain the buildDir, but want to delete all its contents whenever i do “gradle clean”.
I have read in the forums how to do it in a single-root-project scenario, by overwriting the default clean task.
But i have a multi-project build, where the output of all the subproject’s build are put in a single buildDir.
In this case the sub-project’s clean task still deletes both the buildDir and its contents.

So i want to do it like ,when i do “gradle subproject:clean”, i only want the subproject’s stuff in buildDir deleted. and when i do “gradle clean” from the root, all the contents of buildDir should be removed , but the empty buildDir should still be present.

How to accomplish this in gradle?
Thanks in advance for reply,
mugunthan

2

Why do you want to do that?

I think you could do something like:

clean.finalizedBy 'recreateBuildDir'

task recreateBuildDir << { buildDir.mkdirs() }
3

Thanks for replying.

I put the recreateBuildDir snippet in allprojects { } and it worked.
(although it calls the recreateBuildDir for rootproject and all other subprojects)

In the git repo, we store the empty buildDir along with a empty “.gitkeep” file. sort of like a place holder.
So we do a “gradle clean” and then check in to the repository.
We just didnt want the buildDir changes to be checked in accidentally. Hence the question.

4

Wouldn’t it be easier to put build/ in your .gitignore? Then you wouldn’t need this hack, .gitkeep files, or run clean before checking in.