Specifying Plugin JAR dependencies

The way in which you specify dependencies for a plugin is identical to how you specify dependencies in an application. When a plugin is installed into an application the application automatically inherits the dependencies of the plugin.

If you want to define a dependency that is resolved for use with the plugin but not exported to the application then you can set the export property of the dependency:

compile( 'org.hibernate:hibernate-core:3.3.1.GA') {
    export = false
}

In this case the hibernate-core dependency will be available only to the plugin and not resolved as an application dependency. Alternatively, if you're using the map syntax:

compile( group: 'org.hibernate', name: 'hibernate-core', version: '3.3.1.GA', export: false )

You can use exported = false instead of export = false, but we recommend the latter because it's consistent with the map argument.

Overriding Plugin JAR Dependencies in Your Application

If a plugin is using a JAR which conflicts with another plugin, or an application dependency then you can override how a plugin resolves its dependencies inside an application using exclusions. For example:

plugins {
    runtime( "org.grails.plugins:hibernate:1.3.0" ) {
        excludes "javassist"
    }
}

dependencies { runtime "javassist:javassist:3.4.GA" }

In this case the application explicitly declares a dependency on the "hibernate" plugin and specifies an exclusion using the excludes method, effectively excluding the javassist library as a dependency.