Hi,

I have come across this bug when trying to reference many not-yet-defined tasks with square brackets syntax.

Looks like the behaviour of dependsOn with apostrophes and square brackets is inconsistent if depending on not yet defined tasks. In short, it works fine with '' but crashes with []

example build (see attachment)

// THIS WORKS FINE
task dependsOnApostrophe (dependsOn: 'taskA')

// THE LINE BELOW CRASHES THE BUILD
task dependsOnSquareBracket (dependsOn: [taskA])

task taskA {
println "task A"
}

tomek@tomek-desktop:~$ gradle -t

Build failed with an exception.
Run with -s or -d option to get more details. Run with -f option to get the full (very verbose) stacktrace.

Build file '/home/tomek/build.gradle' line: 5

A problem occurred evaluating root project 'tomek'.
Cause: Could not find property 'taskA' on root project 'tomek'.

BUILD FAILED

if line
task dependsOnSquareBracket (dependsOn: [taskA])
is commented than everything works fine.

If this line
task dependsOnSquareBracket (dependsOn: [taskA])
appears after taskA definition, than it also works.

–
best regards
Tomek Kaczanowski
http://kaczanowscy.pl/tomek