file permissions not preserved in Tar task

I have some sh scripts that I want to package in a tar. Example tasks
using Wrapper are below. The issue is that gradlew has a+x permissions
in the directory before the tar, but when untarred it is rw-rr-.
I think the Tar task should preserve file permissions.

task wrapper(type: Wrapper) { gradleVersion = '0.8' jarPath = 'gradleWrapper' }

task testTarDist(type: Tar, dependsOn: 'wrapper') {
dirName = 'testWrapper'
tarFileSet(dir: '.') { include('gradleWrapper/**') include('gradlew') include('gradlew.bat') prefix = dirName }
}

Adam Murdoch said:
You can use the 'filemode' attribute on tarFileSet to specify the permisions for files:
tarFileSet(dir: '.', filemode: '755') { ... }

so there is a workaround, but it seems like the default for tar should be to keep the preexisting permissions instead of defaulting to rw-rr-.