Gradle configuration provided Dependency Ignored in Subproject Build

Question

I have a project with 1 subproject:

projroot/
    settings.gradle
    build.gradle
    mod1/
        build.gradle

In mod1/build.gradle there is a "provided" dependency:

apply plugin: 'java'
configurations {
    provided
}
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    provided group: 'javax.servlet', name: 'javax.servlet-api', version: '3.1.0'
}

This doesn't seem to work when mod1/src/main/java/One.java imports javax.servlet.ServletContext :

> Task :mod1:compileJava FAILED
/home/x/groot/mod1/src/main/java/One.java:1: error: package javax.servlet does not exist
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
                    ^
1 error

...
BUILD FAILED in 0s
2 actionable tasks: 1 executed, 1 up-to-date

Using gradle-4.4.1.

Am I defining the dependency in an incorrect place?

Answer 1

Since Gradle 2.12 introduced compileOnly dependencies I rather recommend to use this. Especially when it comes to a Servlet API that will be provided by the servlet container once you deploy your web application on eg Tomcat, JBoss, ....

dependencies {
    compileOnly group: 'javax.servlet', name: 'javax.servlet-api', version: '3.1.0'
}

provided is a scope used in Maven project that haven't found place in Gradle so far. But compileOnly is very close to Mavens provided scope.