pom.model.packaging = "pom" doesn't work either

This is quite frustrating. But actually almost documented in example 224 of the maven plugin docs. Technically documented, if not morally so.

In general, Gradle seems to thinks it knows how to handle the packaging element. It also thinks "jar" is the default, so that it does not need to write it. (Which is not totally wrong, I read elsewhere.)

So, a workaround is

repositories.mavenDeployer {
repository(url: "file://${buildDir}/distTmp/pseudoMaven2Repo" );
pom.project

pom.whenConfigured(

);
}

except when the value of "packaging" is "jar." In that case, we can hack up the string

pom.withXml(

);

NB also withXml() does not supply a real XmlProvider as advertised; only asString()
works. So why not just supply the string builder?

– Anon.

@John The XmlProvider does now do a better job (0.9.2.). See http://gradle.org/0.9.2/docs/javadoc/org/gradle/api/artifacts/maven/XmlProvider.html

Digging deeper, I found the following:

1. For a project which has the Java plugin applied, Gradle will override any manually set packaging type (e.g. "pom") with "jar". This isn't totally wrong because Gradle will publish the Jar, even if it has size 0. If the Java plugin is not applied however, no publishing will take place. So it might not be possible at the moment to publish only a POM. Workaround is to abandon the parent POM and duplicate the information in every child POM.

2. Gradle never outputs <packaging>jar</packaging> because this is the default. (Actually it's the underlying Maven code that doesn't output this.) Except for aesthetic requirements, this shouldn't be a problem.

Unless I've missed something, this still affects Gradle 1.4. Here's the workaround that I'm using to output the "jar" packaging. It inserts the element right after the "version" tag.

pom.withXml { root ->
    def children = root.asNode().children()
    def versionIndex = children.indexOf(children.find {it.name().localPart == 'version'})
    children.add(versionIndex + 1, new Node(null, 'packaging', 'jar'))
}

It shouldn't be necessary to do so, because <packaging>jar</packaging> is the default (like <scope>compile</scope> etc.). That's why the Maven (!) code used underneath doesn't write it to the file.

I am trying to generate a Maven plugin using Gradle, so I need to be able to specify the packaging type as maven-plugin. Seems like it should be a simple thing to do, but this bug makes it more difficult.

I can confirm this is still very much an open issue. I'm not trying to generate a pom.xml with JAR packaging, but rather with pom packaging so that I can generate dependencies pom, much like what Spring is doing for several of their projects

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