Confusing error when src/main/webapp/appengine-web.xml not found

[briandealwis]

I'm following the instructions at https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/java/tools/gradle, but had forgotten to add an appengine-web.xml. gradle appengineRun produces a very confusing error message. I initially tried with Gradle 2.12 and thought the plugin might require a different version and so tried 4.1, to the same effect.

$ ls src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/
web.xml

$ gradle appengineRun

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Build file '/Users/bsd/Manumitting/Projects/GooglePluginEclipse/test-projects/gradle-app-engine-standard/build.gradle' line: 32

* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating root project 'gradle-app-engine-standard'.
> Could not find method run() for arguments [build_7nfq7n4xs7v418q9yllpwyn3u$_run_closure3$_closure5@74e5d752] on object of type com.google.cloud.tools.gradle.appengine.core.AppEngineExtension.

* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.

* Get more help at https://help.gradle.org

BUILD FAILED in 0s

[loosebazooka]

Did you mean to file this against https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/app-gradle-plugin?

It has to do with auto-detection which is not ideal. Can you move it there?

[briandealwis]

Oops, will do!