Gradle task should not execute automatically

Solution 1:

A common pitfall. Add an action to the task otherwise code will run at configuration phase. Sample task with action:

task sample << {
}

As I see You'd rather need to write a custom task than using Exec type. I suppose it's not valid to define commandLine twice.

EDIT

You can read this post to get the general idea how it all works.

Solution 2:

You are mixing Task configuration and groovy code. Everything that is part of the main body of a task definition will be executed in the configuration phase. The task task1 << { code } is a shorthand for

task task1 {
  doLast {
    code
  }
}

commandLine is part of the Exec Task but your other code is not and should be wrapped into a doLast this will execute the commandline first and then execute your additional code. If you need another exec commandLine then you'll need another task.

task releaseCandidate(type: Exec) {
    commandLine 'git', 'checkout', 'develop'

    doLast {
    // Increment version code in Manifest
    String manifest = new File('AndroidManifest.xml').getText('UTF-8')
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile('android:versionCode="([0-9]+)"')
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(manifest)
    matcher.find()
    int newVersionCode = Integer.parseInt(matcher.group(1)) + 1
    manifest = manifest.replaceAll(
        "android:versionCode=\"([0-9]+)\"", "android:versionCode=\"$newVersionCode\""
    )
    new File('AndroidManifest.xml').write(manifest, 'UTF-8')
    }
}