Gradle ternary/elvis operator not setting 'else' value when external property not set - properties

Question

The 'else' value of the elvis/ternary operator in my gradle build file is not setting the property value if I do not run gradle with the "-P" option.
Here's the root project's build.gradle
defaultTasks 'loadConfiguration'
task loadConfiguration << {
def profile = hasProperty('profile') ? profile : 'dev'
ext.profile = profile
def configFile = file('profile.properties')
def config = new ConfigSlurper(profile).parse(configFile.toURL())
ext.config = config
}
configure (subprojects) {
profile = profile //inject property into sub-project
println profile
task buildear << {
ear
}
}
The sub-project 'ear' is in the settings.gradle file.
Below are the results of a build attempt-
With external property set:
$ gradle -Pprofile=wwww
Parallel execution is an incubating feature.
wwww
wwww
wwww
:loadConfiguration
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 5.834 secs
With empty external property set:
$ gradle -Pprofile
Parallel execution is an incubating feature.
:loadConfiguration
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 5.389 secs
With no external property set:
$ gradle
Parallel execution is an incubating feature.
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.
* Where:
Build file '/home/robert/codingk/kazi/trunk2/mazama2/build.gradle' line: 13
* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating root project 'mazama2'.
> Could not find property 'profile' on project ':ear'.
* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
BUILD FAILED
Total time: 2.104 secs
Line 13 is the line "profile = profile //inject property into sub-project"
I cannot figure out why the 'profile' property is not getting set to 'dev'. A few things I've tried without success:
profile= "${profile}
def profile = project.hasProperty('profile') ? profile : 'dev'
project.ext.profile = profile

Answer 1

some remarks about your initial build script.
In your initial build script you declared a task (loadConfiguration) to set the profile. This logic is executed AFTER the configure block below
is executed. That's one reason why "profile" is always null in the configuration block
The second problem is, that you need to be careful about scoping. In the snippet
ext.profile = profile
you add a dynamic property to the loadConfiguration task, not to the project itself. That's why you can't reference
The profile property if you havn't passed it via commandline.
Maybe instead of doing the configuration loading in a seperate task, do it on the top level of your build:
ext.profile = hasProperty('profile') ? profile : 'dev'
def configFile = file('profile.properties')
def config = new ConfigSlurper(profile).parse(configFile.toURL())
ext.config = config
configure (subprojects) {
profile = profile //inject property into sub-project
println profile
task buildear << {
ear
}
}

Answer 2

Got it working with the following modifications. I may be wrong but I believe it had to do with task ordering; declaring loadConfiguration() as a default task did not cause it to be executed first which is what I needed
def loadConfiguration() {
def profile = hasProperty('profile') ? profile : 'dev'
ext.profile = profile
def configFile = file('profile.properties')
def config = new ConfigSlurper(profile).parse(configFile.toURL())
ext.config = config
}
configure (subprojects) {
loadConfiguration()
profile = profile //inject property into sub-project
println profile
task buildear << {
ear
}
}