The gradle jar task should (like Ant jar task) use UTF-8 for directory and file names.
(preferably you should be able to customize the encoding used as well...)

Currently if you have file names/directory names using "foreign"/non ansi characters in their names the jar task may end up messing up the file names.

So in my example I'm using gradle on windows (with cp1252). I've got java classes using norwegian characters in their names (æ, ø, å).

• compiling the files works fine and the generated classes keep the correct characters
• the jar task will "mangle" any filename with norwegian characters.

To get around this problem I had to add the following to the root build gradle file of my multiproject

System.setProperty("file.encoding", "UTF-8")