An important part of an Ivy publication is the descriptor file. We already saw that Gradle added a generateDescriptorFile<publicationName> task to our project. Furthermore, we can define some properties of the descriptor file inside a publication configuration. Gradle also offers a hook to customize the generated descriptor file even further.

Gradle uses the project's version, group, name, and status properties for the info element in the Ivy descriptor file generated. We will create a new example build file where we define the project properties, so they will be included in the file:

apply plugin: 'ivy-publish'
apply plugin: 'java'

// Defined project properties, that are
// used in the generated descriptor file.
// The name of the project is by default
// the directory name, but we can
// change it via a settings.gradle file
// and the rootProject.name property.
version = '2.1.RELEASE'
group = 'book.gradle'

repositories {
  jcenter()
}

dependencies...