The base plugin adds two configurations; "archives" and "default". All of the userguide documentation about publishing artifacts references the "archives" configuration and all of the upload examples are using the "uploadArchives" task.

This is causing a problem in that users are assigning extra things (e.g. source and javadoc jars) to the "archives" configuration and because "default" extends "archives" and is the default configuration used for project dependencies, unnecessary stuff gets built when the user does not want it. For example, if java subproject "a" has:

task sourcesJar(type: Jar, dependsOn: classes) { 
	classifier = 'sources' 
	from sourceSets.main.allSource
} 

task javadocJar(type: Jar, dependsOn: javadoc) { 
	classifier = 'javadoc' 
	from javadoc.destinationDir 
} 

artifacts {
	archives javadocJar, sourcesJar
}

And java project "b" has:

dependencies {
    compile project(":a")
}

Running :b:build is going to build "a"'s javadoc and source jars unnecessarily. Even worse, it's going to put them on "b"'s compile classpath.

I propose that we have the base plugin introduce another configuration, "published", that extends "archives" and change all of the upload examples in the manual to use "uploadPublished".