How to pass arguments from command line to gradle

project.group is a predefined property. With -P, you can only set project properties that are not predefined. Alternatively, you can set Java system properties (-D).

Building on Peter N's answer, this is an example of how to add (optional) user-specified arguments to pass to Java main for a JavaExec task (since you can't set the 'args' property manually for the reason he cites.)

Add this to the task:

task(runProgram, type: JavaExec) {

  [...]

  if (project.hasProperty('myargs')) {
      args(myargs.split(','))
  }

... and run at the command line like this

% ./gradlew runProgram '-Pmyargs=-x,7,--no-kidding,/Users/rogers/tests/file.txt'

My program with two arguments, args[0] and args[1]:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    System.out.println(args);
    String host = args[0];
    System.out.println(host);
    int port = Integer.parseInt(args[1]);

my build.gradle

run {
    if ( project.hasProperty("appArgsWhatEverIWant") ) {
        args Eval.me(appArgsWhatEverIWant)
    }
}

my terminal prompt:

gradle run  -PappArgsWhatEverIWant="['localhost','8080']"