It is intentionally that the gradle install task does not install the documentation. We use the gradle-bin distribution as the distribution to be installed. The execution is much faster as building the docs takes quite a bit of time. The install task was written for the gradle developers and we want to provide a debug cycle which is as short as possible.

The new gradle init script features we have provided with 0.8 would allow you to customize the Gradle build specifically for your needs. You could for example use it to add an install task that takes gradle-all as the base.

All that is really needed is a doc:install task in the gradle-doc subproject that is not depended on by the build of the Gradle executable.

I remain of the view that this can be added as standard without affecting the build for the developers. I agree it takes a long time and should not be part of the base development cycle. Having an independent extra task doesn't hurt and it solves the problem.

I haven't reopened this issue but I think I would like to.