Gradle does nothing on distZip task from distribution plugin - gradle

Question

I have a Problem with the distribution Plugin of Gradle. I just want to use the plugin to bundle all my files together (jar's, shell-scripts, ...).
Here my build.gradle:
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'maven-publish'
apply plugin: 'distribution'
sourceCompatibility = 1.7
targetCompatibility = 1.7
publishing {
...
}
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
// public libraries
compile group: 'javax', name: 'javaee-api', version: '7.0'
compile group: 'javax.mail', name: 'javax.mail-api', version: '1.5.2'
compile group: 'commons-cli', name: 'commons-cli', version: '1.2'
compile group: 'org.apache.axis', name: 'axis', version: '1.4'
compile group: 'org.apache.axis', name: 'axis-jaxrpc', version: '1.4'
compile group: 'commons-discovery', name: 'commons-discovery', version: '0.4'
compile group: 'commons-logging', name: 'commons-logging', version: '1.1.1'
compile group: 'wsdl4j', name: 'wsdl4j', version: '1.6.2'
compile group: 'javax.xml.soap', name: 'saaj-api', version: '1.3'
compile group: 'org.slf4j', name: 'slf4j-api', version: '1.7.10'
runtime group: 'ch.qos.logback', name: 'logback-classic', version: '1.1.2'
// this is a dirty workaround
// because I don't have deploy rights on artifactory and nobody has time for deploying my artifacts
compile fileTree(dir: 'lib', include: '*.jar')
}
Here the output:
$ ./gradlew distTar
Defaulting memory setting '-Xmx1024M'...
:distZip UP-TO-DATE
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 2.44 secs
And nothing happens. No Zip File is created.
I'm using the latest version of Gradle (2.2.1)
Important for me is also, that I can use the installDist option of the plugin.
Any Ideas what's going wrong?

Answer 1

I found out what the Problem was:
The distZip wasn't working, because there were no files or libraries configured to be packed into the archive. By default, only the src/$distribution.name/dist is considered. The rest must be specified.
To ensure that at least the jar-File of the project is contained too, I used the plugin "java-library-distribution" instead of "distribution"
Furthermore I specified more files to consider:
distributions {
main {
contents {
from { 'distrib' }
}
}
}

Answer 2

If your $buildDir is empty, you have to configure a distribution:
distributions {
main {
baseName = 'someName'
contents {
from { 'src/readme' }
}
}
}
Also see https://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/distribution_plugin.html