Gradle distributions across

I’m having issues using the installDist task in the Distributions plugin. From my research, this task will only work if the build directory is identical from the time the distribution was created, to the time it’s installed. If the build directory has been cleaned, and the distribution placed back in the build directory, then the installDist will not recognize it as an input. This must be somehow related to the file caches that are created as part of incremental build support.

I’m not sure if this is by design, but it seems strange. For instance, the --rerun-tasks has no effect on it, which seems problematic as well.

==> gradle installDist --rerun-tasks
:obiee/sugarcrm:installDist UP-TO-DATE

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 0.616 secs
==> 

I pulled a few sections out of the --info output for brevity sake:

:obiee/sugarcrm:installDist (Thread[Daemon worker Thread 5,5,main]) started.
:obiee/sugarcrm:installDist
Skipping task ':obiee/sugarcrm:installDist' as it has no source files.
:obiee/sugarcrm:installDist UP-TO-DATE
:obiee/sugarcrm:installDist (Thread[Daemon worker Thread 5,5,main]) completed. Took 0.001 secs.

Have I missed the point of the Distributions plugin? It seems the only value in doing an “install” of a distribution (which is just an extract/sync of an archive file) is that the distribution artifact can be published somewhere, and then pulled back at a later time to be re-installed into the build directory. That’s what I was using it for anyway.