How to deploy from multiple projects to multiple target servers using Gradle CDCI

gradle-deploy-multiple-projects-to-multiple-targets.gradle

["server-1", "server-2", "server-3"].each { server ->
  task "deploy-to-$server" (type: Copy) {
    description: "Copies the project executables to $server"
    enabled: true
    group: "distribution"
    afterEvaluate { Project project -> 
      from: "$distDir/$distZip"
      into: "\\\\$server\\share\\${project.name}\\"
    }
  }
}

A Copy task in Gradle can take input from multiple locations, but it can have only 1 output target. In a multi-project setup, we would hate to set up a separate deployment task for each project to each server. Luckily a Gradle build script is code, too. Code that gets interpreted and executed. Thus we can generate multiple tasks using just 1 declaration. That's what this gist does: it creates a separate deployment task for each of the target servers.

This works for Gradle versions 5.4.1 and up. Maybe earlier, too, but we didn't test that.

In the Gradle documentation this is known as "dynamic task creation". It doesn't create dynamic tasks... instead it dynamically creates tasks.

We have tried other variations as well. None of these worked:

• put the target server expansion inside the task, inside the project-specific 'afterEvaluate' scope;
• put the target server expansion inside the task, enveloping the project-specific 'afterEvaluate' scope.