Exclude transitive dependency of Gradle plugin

Question

Excluding a transitive dependency in Gradle is pretty straightforward:

compile('com.example.m:m:1.0') {
     exclude group: 'org.unwanted', module: 'x'
  }

How would we go around he situation in which we use a plugin:

apply: "somePlugin"

And when getting the dependencies we realize that the plugin is bringing some transitive dependencies of its own?

Answer 1

You can remove dependencies after the plugin is applied, (from a single configuration, or to all configurations) using eg. compile.exclude. Note that compile resolves to a "Configuration"; see the javadocs at Configuration.exclude .

edit

Be aware that excluding dependecies could fail, if the configuration has already been resolved.

---

Sample script

apply plugin: 'java-library'

repositories {
    jcenter()
}

dependencies {
    compile 'junit:junit:4.12'
    compile 'ant:ant:1.6'
    compile 'org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:3.8'
}

// remove dependencies
configurations.all {
  exclude group:'junit', module:'junit'
}
configurations.compile {
  exclude group:'org.apache.commons', module: 'commons-lang3'
}

println 'compile deps:\n' + configurations.compile.asPath