Are pmd, repositories etc tasks in Gradle - gradle

Question

I am creating basic custom tasks in Gradle and learning how to extend them to do more complicated actions (Learning from here: https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/tutorial_using_tasks.html).
One of my reference projects, which I am extending to learn Gradle looks something like this
// pmd config
pmd {
ignoreFailures = false
reportsDir = file("$globalOutputDir/pmd")
toolVersion = toolVersions.pmdVersion
}
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
task listSubProjects{
doLast{
println 'Searching in root dir `'
}
}
My question is around the pmd and repositories sections and why they don't have a clear qualifier like "task" on them but my listSubProjects requires a task qualifier? Are these inherited tasks from plugins and don't need a task qualifier?

Answer 1

The blocks that you see are task extensions, also discussed here.
A plugin creator can define extensions to allow users to configure a plugin:
// plugin code
class GreetingPluginExtension {
// default value
String message = 'Hello from GreetingPlugin'
}
// plugin code
class GreetingPlugin implements Plugin<Project> {
void apply(Project project) {
// Add the 'greeting' extension object
def extension = project.extensions.create('greeting', GreetingPluginExtension)
// Add a task that uses configuration from the extension object
...
}
}
In project.extensions.create('greeting',... the greeting block to be used later in build.gradle files is defined.
Then in user build.gradle files
apply plugin: GreetingPlugin
// Configure the extension
greeting.message = 'Hi from Gradle'
// Same effect as previous lines but with different syntax
greeting {
message = 'Hi from Gradle'
}
Often the name of the extension is chosen to be the same as the plugin and/or the task, which can make things confusing.