JAR added to Gradle project but no entry in build.gradle

Question

I am new to the Java tools and stuff, so please be gentle.

I see that someone has added the Simple Logging Façade 4 Java (SLF4J) logging capability to a project I am looking at in IntelliJ IDEA. The project is a Gradle project and when I see the Project Structure -> Module -> Dependencies , I do see a dependency for the SLF4 jars.

I also see these listed in the External Libraries node in the treeview in the Project window.

However, when I open the build.gradle file, I see no entry for slfj. How is that? How would this library have been added to the project?

Answer 1

slf4j is a transitive dependency of some other library.

Use ./gradlew dependencies on the root folder of your project to see the dependencies graph.

Answer 2

slf4j ist most likely a transitive dependency of one of the declared dependencies.

To list the dependency tree, you can use gradlew dependencies .

To list the dependency tree for a specific configuration, you can use gradlew dependencies --configuration runtime .

In your situation you can also use the other way around and use dependencyInsight task instead like gradlew dependencyInsight --configuration runtime --dependency org.slf4j:slf4j-api to see which declared dependencies depen on the given dependency in the given configuration.