diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 60fa733..1c78f6c 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -112,6 +112,12 @@
 Be sure that your default Java version (which Gradle should use automatically) is at
 least 16!
 
+If you are building from the official source *release* (not from source that you
+got from Git), `gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar` is missing from that, and you
+have to add it yourself! You can download it
+[from GitHub source code page](https://github.com/apache/freemarker/tree/2.3-gae/gradle/wrapper)!
+(Or, use your own Gradle installation instead of `gradlew`.)
+
 To build `freemarker.jar`, just issue `./gradlew jar` in the project root directory,
 and it should download all dependencies automatically and build `freemarker.jar`.
 
diff --git a/build.gradle.kts b/build.gradle.kts
index 35e32bf..e9a2750 100644
--- a/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/build.gradle.kts
@@ -431,13 +431,14 @@
                 "**/*.kts",
                 "*.txt",
                 "osgi.bnd",
-                "rat-excludes"
+                "rat-excludes",
+                "gradlew*",
+                "gradle/**"
         )
         exclude(
                 "/build",
                 "/*/build",
-                "/gradle/wrapper",
-                "/gradlew*",
+                "/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar",
                 "**/*.bak",
                 "**/*.~*",
                 "*/*.*~"