Russel has written the following script for this functionality

#! /bin/sh

gradleSvn=/home/Checkouts/Subversion/Gradle_Core_Trunk
gradleExplodedDist=$gradleSvn/build/distributions/exploded
gradleHome=$HOME/lib/JavaPackages/gradle-trunk

items=''
for item in bin gradle-imports lib LICENSE NOTICE plugin.properties
README.txt
do
  items="$items $gradleExplodedDist/$item"
done

( cd $gradleSvn && rm -rf $gradleSvn/build $gradleSvn/build-resolver
&& ./gradlew -Dskip.test=true explodedDist )
rm -rf $gradleHome
mkdir $gradleHome
chmod 700 $gradleHome
cp -rp $items $gradleHome

Ideally, it seems like this ought to be a groovy script
for the sake of the poor souls who must develop on
Windows. That said, those miserable wretches
probably use Cygwin anyway... but... I dunno.

It would be nice if Gradle's core dependencies were kept to an
absolute minimum, so developing ancillary scripts like this in
Groovy would help in that regard. Also, we might want to draw
some lessons from the evolution of Git on Windows, and the
hassles they've gone through porting helper scripts.

Personally, I believe that a developer on Windows would be a bit
nutty to not use Cygwin; however, enough nutjobs are out there
that do seem to be otherwise productive, friendly, loving people who
can actually program....

Anyway, thanks for the script Russel. It is a nice contribution, and I may
actually use it in the short term. My comments are really about Gradle's
overall strategy in terms of platform support & dependencies.
I don't mean to "look a gift horse in the mouth".

-----------------------------------------

Aside:
I wonder where the "gift horse" expression came from.
The best I can come up with is that if someone gives you a
magnanimous gift like a horse, you should not complain if
it has ugly teeth. If that were the correct interpretation, then
wouldn't you say "Don't look at (or in) a gift horse's mouth"?
If so, what about Greek gift horses?

Any thoughts on that?

Don't look at (or in) a gift horse's mouth

That is the way we say it in German.

The long term goal to implement this feature, is to provide a new 'version control system' project type where updating the project is part of the build if this is wanted.

On the one hand the script here - - which I have now changed almost beyond recognition – is out of date, so the issue can be marked as something and closed.

On the other hand, Gradle no longer builds when the equivalent of this script is used

Do we still need this?