Gradle Composite Build: How to Disable an Included Build Task from the Root Project?

Question

I have a composite Gradle (7.x) build and want to edit the root project gradle file to permanently prevent a specific included task from executing. I can successfully accomplish this from the command line with -x :included-build:bad-task but cannot figure out how to permanently accomplish the same thing within the root gradle script. None of the solutions from these questions seem to work:

• How can I disable a task in build.gradle
• Gradle disable automatic subproject execution for specific task

Answer 1

If you know "how" it's included, you can remove it.

For example, check depends on checkstyleTest, and can be removed via check.dependsOn.remove("checkstyleTest")

See here: https://discuss.gradle.org/t/how-to-remove-a-task-dependency/7481

It might be a matter of some detective work to find where it's brought in. Things like ./gradlew whateverTask --dry-run can be used to show the progression. Various temporary tasks could be used to output config information.

Edit 1

Understanding it is hard to know exactly your needs without more context. But, depending on your needs, the below might work from your top project:

gradle.projectsEvaluated {
    childProjects["included-build"].tasks.build.dependsOn -= "bad-task"
}

The main points being...

• The task is removed after the project is evaluated (so it exists first).
• The remove uses the -= operator. Prevents Removing a task dependency from a task instance is not supported. which happens if you use .remove
• Using Gradle 8.0.1

Running this with something like successfully removes check from build.

childProjects["application"].tasks.build.dependsOn -= "check"