I've used main = '-jar' as a workaround to this issue with success.

To help others until such time as executable jars are directly supported, here are two tactics which work, from a working gradle file:

task run (dependsOn: assemble) << {
String jarPath = relativePath(new File(libsDir, archivesBaseName + ".jar"))

javaexec

// No params

// Same w/ params:
javaexec

// Since ant.java doesn't return a Groovy process, you can't get
// stderr/stdout. Therefore if your program produces output that you need,
// you must save it off.
ant.java(fork: true, jar: jarPath, outputproperty: 'op',

)
println ant.properties.op
}

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Still want. I build jar-run apps all the time and shouldn't need a hack to accommodate a basic JRE feature.

@Blaine Simpson Did you try out the application plugin? That's exactly what it provides (among other things).

Ben: I use the application plugin regularly. What is the application-plugin-provided task or operator the provides exactly this ability? This issue has nothing to do with building a jar, but with executing a jar (honoring the Jar's manifest). The application plugin reference lists no task that can do it, nor does the Gradle task listing ("gradlew tasks"). Executing the "run" task in an application project doesn't touch the project-generated jar file.

@Blaine Simpson Correct, I was thinking of the run task which sets the classpath via -cp. Can you describe why it matters how you run your application? Can you describe your use case? Is that for testing purposes?

That's how I distribute my app, as a jar file. In some cases with dependent jar files referenced in the manifest. Without shell scripts, etc. So that is how I want it exercised and tested, on multiple platforms. I also have other apps installed to run this way, and I'd like to be able to just execute them from Gradle. For example I have a Creole wikitext engine that I use to build documentation, and it's designed to be run by executing the jar without need to know the main class, etc. My build for the Creole engine itself, for example, runs many unit tests in this way. I know that I can execute a JRE manually to run with "-jar" and that's what I'm doing. Just seems that a powerful build tool should support a standard Java invocation mechanism.

The work is now tracked via https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/1346.