In my custom plugin, I have the following multi-line description for a custom task:
project.tasks.register("myTask", {
description = """Performs myTask with perfection.
To use the new flux capacitor, use -Pflux=new."""})
When this is rendered in calling gradle tasks, it prints the multiline which is annoying. Is there a way to provide a task summary (one line for gradle tasks) and a task description (multi-line for gradle help --task myTask)?
Sounds like you should open a feature request to either normalize \s++ into one space for tasks, or for being able to specify separate properties.
From a quick look both simply use the description without any condition.
Anything you could do would be extremely hacky, like overriding getDescription and checking the call-stack where the call is made from. 
Or… when tasks is called, only print the first line of the description (until the first of line character)?
It until the first blank line like with Git commit messages. 