In the actual use case from which this issue arose, I'm building up a distribution zip by depending on and unpacking other smaller zips, e.g.:

task distZip(type: Zip, dependsOn: docsZip) {
    from zipTree(docsZip)
}

The expected behavior would be that I can omit the dependsOn declaration, and that the task dependency would be implicit:

task distZip(type: Zip) {
    from zipTree(docsZip)
}

Note that I don't think this has anything directly to do with zipTree; even the following doesn't work as expected (i.e. still requires the explicit dependsOn)

task distZip(type: Zip) {
    from docsZip // will silently fail without an explicit 'dependsOn: docsZip'!
}

This problem seems only to happen for Zip tasks, and not for Jar tasks, for example, the following snippet taken from that same distZip task works fine:

  subprojects.each { subproject ->
        into("${baseDir}/libs") {
            from subproject.jar
            from subproject.sourcesJar
            from subproject.javadocJar
        }
    }

and nowhere in that task definition do I say dependsOn subproject.jar, etc.

As announced on the Gradle blog we are planning to completely migrate issues from JIRA to GitHub.

We intend to prioritize issues that are actionable and impactful while working more closely with the community. Many of our JIRA issues are inactionable or irrelevant. We would like to request your help to ensure we can appropriately prioritize JIRA issues you’ve contributed to.

Please confirm that you still advocate for your JIRA issue before December 10th, 2016 by:

• Checking that your issues contain requisite context, impact, behaviors, and examples as described in our published guidelines.
• Leave a comment on the JIRA issue or open a new GitHub issue confirming that the above is complete.

We look forward to collaborating with you more closely on GitHub. Thank you for your contribution to Gradle!

Thanks again for reporting this issue. We haven't heard back from you after our inquiry from November 15th. We are closing this issue now. Please create an issue on GitHub if you still feel passionate about getting it resolved.