“gradle publish” wrongly reporting up-to-date

I'm trying to build Apache S4 and publish it to our Nexus repository. gradle publishToMavenLocal worked, so I added

publishing {
    repositories {
        maven {
            credentials {
                username "admin"
                password "admin123"
            }
            url "http://127.0.0.1:9081/nexus/content/repositories/releases/"
        }
    }
}

to build.gradle after apply plugin: 'maven-publish'. This worked for other projects on the same machine. However, now I get

aromanov@ws:~/etc/apache-s4-0.6.0$ gradle clean publish
Build file '/home/aromanov/etc/apache-s4-0.6.0/subprojects/s4-benchmarks/s4-benchmarks.gradle': line 42
The RepositoryHandler.mavenRepo() method has been deprecated and is scheduled to be removed in Gradle 2.0. Please use the maven() method instead.
Runs Apache RAT. Exclusions are defined in .rat-excludes fileUNDEFINED
:clean
:s4-base:clean
:s4-benchmarks:clean
:s4-comm:clean
:s4-core:clean
:s4-tools:clean
:test-apps:clean
:test-apps:consumer-app:clean
:test-apps:producer-app:clean
:test-apps:simple-deployable-app-1:clean
:s4-base:publish UP-TO-DATE
:s4-benchmarks:publish UP-TO-DATE
:s4-comm:publish UP-TO-DATE
:s4-core:publish UP-TO-DATE
:s4-tools:publish UP-TO-DATE
:test-apps:publish UP-TO-DATE
:test-apps:consumer-app:publish UP-TO-DATE
:test-apps:producer-app:publish UP-TO-DATE
:test-apps:simple-deployable-app-1:publish UP-TO-DATE

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 10.468 secs

Using gradle -i I get

Selected primary task 'publish'
Tasks to be executed: [task ':s4-base:publish', task ':s4-benchmarks:publish', task ':s4-comm:publish', task ':s4-core:publish', task ':s4-tools:publish', task ':test-apps:publish', task ':test-apps:consumer-app:publish', task ':test-apps:producer-app:publish', task ':test-apps:simple-deployable-app-1:publish']
:s4-base:publish (Thread[main,5,main]) started.
:s4-base:publish
Skipping task ':s4-base:publish' as it has no actions.
:s4-base:publish UP-TO-DATE
:s4-base:publish (Thread[main,5,main]) completed. Took 0.005 secs.
... so on for other subprojects

There is no output at the Nexus repository. How can I fix this?

UPDATE: if I use configuration from chapter 51 of the User Guide, replacing ivy by maven:

uploadArchives {
    repositories {
        maven {
            credentials {
                username "admin"
                password "admin123"
            }
            url "http://127.0.0.1:9081/nexus/content/repositories/releases/"
        }
    }
}

then upload works, but it uploads jars and ivy.xml, without POMs. With config from Chapter 52:

configurations {
    deployerJars
}

dependencies {
    deployerJars "org.apache.maven.wagon:wagon-http:2.2"
}

uploadArchives {
    configuration = configurations.deployerJars
    repositories {
        mavenDeployer {
            repository(url: "http://127.0.0.1:9081/nexus/content/repositories/releases/") {
                authentication(userName: "admin", password: "admin123")
            }
        }
    }
}

I get

aromanov@ws:~/etc/apache-s4-0.6.0$ gradle -i upload
Starting Build
Starting file lock listener thread.
...
Publishing configuration: configuration ':s4-base:deployerJars'
Publishing to repository 'mavenDeployer'
[ant:null] Error reading settings file '/tmp/gradle_empty_settings2934509160228124339.xml' - ignoring. Error was: /tmp/gradle_empty_settings2934509160228124339.xml (No such file or directory)
:s4-base:uploadArchives (Thread[main,5,main]) completed. Took 1.113 secs.
...

The complete build script.

If no any action found, it will mark as up to date . I am using gradle 2.4 and this is working like a charm

publishing {
publications {
    mavenJava(MavenPublication) {
        from components.java
    }
}
repositories {
maven {
  credentials {
    username 'admin'
    password 'password'
  }
  url "http://baseUrl/artifactory/libs-release-local"
}
}
}

you need to provide publish repositories and publications.