I'm playing around with gradle trying to port my maven project and here's my problem:
In maven we have the <dependencyManagement> which provides a common (default) version for certain dependencies (which is used only when in a sub-pom this artifact is used without a version number). It also, from what I understand, forces a certain version for all transitive dependencies. So if I understand correctly even if artifact B which we have as a dependency has a dependency on artifact C version 1.0 then we will still use a version of artifact C defined in the <dependencyManagement> (so it might be 2.0). Is that correct?
If so then is there a way to do something similar in Gradle? I know that a common way of replacing the <dependencyManagement> is to simply create a Groovy map in one of the build scripts. But how can I force the transitive dependency version? If I use Gradle's "force" won't it affect all (not only transitive) dependencies (which is obviously not what I want)?
In Gradle, forcing a version (e.g. with Configuration.resolutionStrategy.force) will force it for all dependencies of the configuration, direct and transitive. There is no first-class feature that forces a version only for transitive dependencies. Do you have a valid use case for this? At the end of the day, both Gradle and Maven will select a single version for a dependency anyway, no matter where and how often it appears in the dependency tree.