Port more non-API bug fixes and enhancements from main to 8.x

[Goooler]

Port additional non-API bug fixes and enhancements from main to 8.x.

Ported PRs / Fixes

• Fix missing space in ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer preamble causing malformed NOTICE header #1623, Fix using ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer without projectName #1627, Fix extra indents of ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer output #1628 - Fix formatting and copyright handling in ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer
• Fix ShadowJar not being successful after includes or excludes are changed #1200 - Fix ShadowJar not being re-executed after includes or excludes are changed
• Drop start script templates and clean up ShadowApplicationPlugin #1738 - Respect executableDir in application extension when configuring start scripts and distribution

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Ports a set of non-API fixes from main into the 8.x line, improving NOTICE merging behavior, ShadowJar cache invalidation, and application distribution layout when executableDir is customized.

Changes:

• Adjust ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer formatting/copyright handling and output writing.
• Ensure ShadowJar reruns when includes / excludes change by wiring them into task inputs.
• Respect javaApplication.executableDir when generating/installing start scripts and distributions; update changelog.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
src/main/groovy/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/transformers/ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer.groovy	Refines NOTICE parsing/output generation and copyright fallback behavior.
src/main/groovy/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/tasks/ShadowJar.java	Adds includes/excludes as explicit task inputs to fix up-to-date behavior.
src/main/groovy/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/ShadowApplicationPlugin.groovy	Updates install and distribution script handling to honor executableDir.
src/docs/changes/README.md	Documents the backported fixes in the Unreleased changelog.

---

💡 Add a code-review agent skill or configure MCP servers for context-aware, tailored reviews. Learn more in the docs.

[Goooler]

Merged into #2186.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Suppressed comments (2)

src/main/groovy/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/transformers/ApacheNoticeResourceTransformer.groovy:195

• When a user explicitly configures copyright, actualCopyright becomes the user value, but the derived fallbackCopyright entry from the NOTICE contents can still be emitted later in the output because the skip condition only checks actualCopyright. This can reintroduce duplicate copyright blocks. Consider skipping fallbackCopyright as well (and still skipping actualCopyright if it happens to appear in entries).

            if (line == actualCopyright && count != 2) {
                continue

src/main/groovy/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/ShadowApplicationPlugin.groovy:128

• This PR changes installation/layout behavior to respect javaApplication.executableDir, but there doesn’t appear to be an integration test asserting non-default executableDir affects install/dist outputs (existing ApplicationSpec only exercises the default bin). Adding a test that sets application { executableDir = 'custom-bin' } and asserts scripts land under that directory (and are chmod’d) would help prevent regressions.

            into({ javaApplication.executableDir }) {
                from(startScripts)
                filePermissions { it.unix(493) }
            }