When using the "classifier" attribute on an Archive task, gradle will not upload the POM to a maven repo and does not replace SNAPSHOT with a timestamp version number.

A simple project which creates just a tar/jar/zip from some files and sets the classifier to "dist". (See attached build.gradle).

"gradle tasks" no longer displays the "install" task and invoking the "install" tasks gives a "Task not found" error.
"gradle uploadArchives" uploads the tar/jar/zip without replacing "SNAPSHOT" with a timestamp and does not upload the POM.

Removing the classifier specification from the ArchiveTask definition resolves the problem.

The same behavior is displayed if the classifier is instead added in the artifacts.archives specification:

artifacts {
archives(myZip) { classifier = "dist" }
}

An extended discussion of this issue can be found here: http://forums.gradle.org/gradle/topics/pom_doesnt_upload