Deploy additional files in Gradle Application Plugin

I revisited this problem several months later and I finally have an elegant solution. The following code should be added to the gradle file:

distZip {
    into(project.name) {
        from '.'
        include 'conf/*'
    }
}

This adds an additional include to the distZip task. This copies the “conf” directory (including contents) into the Zip distribution.

The generated zip file contains a single directory which is the same as the project name. This is why the “into” part is required.