Understanding Gradle task dependency (dependsOn)

Question

Two questions:

1. What is the gradle way to specify that 1 task is comprised of several other tasks?
2. It seems like gradle\'s taskName.execute()

Answer 1

Gradle's task model is "flat" and doesn't have a concept of aggregation. (It's important to note that TaskInternal#execute is an internal method, and must not be called from build scripts.) Aggregation is often simulated with a lifecycle task (a task with task dependencies but without any task actions):

task allTests {
    dependsOn tasks.withType(Test)
}

Besides dependsOn, the following task relationships are supported: mustRunAfter, shouldRunAfter, and finalizedBy.