Where to put the gradle.properties file

Actually there are 3 places where gradle.properties can be placed:

1. Under gradle user home directory defined by the GRADLE_USER_HOME environment variable, which if not set defaults to USER_HOME/.gradle
2. The sub-project directory (myProject2 in your case)
3. The root project directory (under myProject)

Gradle looks for gradle.properties in all these places while giving precedence to properties definition based on the order above. So for example, for a property defined in gradle user home directory (#1) and the sub-project (#2) its value will be taken from gradle user home directory (#1).

You can find more details about it in gradle documentation here.

Gradle looks for gradle.properties files in these places:

• in project build dir (that is where your build script is)
• in sub-project dir
• in gradle user home (defined by the GRADLE_USER_HOME environment variable, which if not set defaults to USER_HOME/.gradle)

Properties from one file will override the properties from the previous ones (so file in gradle user home has precedence over the others, and file in sub-project has precedence over the one in project root).

Reference: https://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/build_environment.html