Gradle: 'provided' Dependency Scope

Maven’s “provided” dependencies are available for compilation and for test execution, but won’t be put on the runtime classpath and won’t be packaged. But unlike Maven, Gradle doesn’t support a “provided” dependency scope out-of-the-box.

Defining a “provided” scope in Gradle is pretty straight-forward, but it is not exactly a one-liner: You have to define a new configuration and add it to the various classpathes.

configurations {
  provided
}

sourceSets {
  main {
    compileClasspath += configurations.provided
  }
  test {
    compileClasspath += configurations.provided
    runtimeClasspath += configurations.provided
  }
}

dependencies {
  provided "javax:j2ee:1.3.1" // example
}

If you are using Gradle’s Eclipse or IDEA support, you must also add the configuration to the classpath of these modules:

eclipse {
  classpath {
    plusConfigurations += [configurations.provided]
    noExportConfigurations += [configurations.provided]
  }
}

idea {
  module {
    scopes.PROVIDED.plus += [configurations.provided]
  }
}