See discussion at http://www.nabble.com/pulling-out-test-task-td24634719.html

The test task should not be required to run as part of building an archive (especially when it is built just to satisfy another project's internal dependencies).

At the same time, we want to allow flexible testing of multiproject builds including tests of all projects that a particular project depends on or that depend on it.

The proposed change to the Java Plugin is:

• Make jar not depend on test.
• Add a build task that depends on dists and test (and style checks if that plugin is used)
• Add a buildNeeded task that depends on build in this project and in any projects it depends on in the testRuntime configuration
• Add a buildDependents task that depends on build in this project and any projects which depend on it in their testRuntime configurations