Improve dependency resolution for localGroovy()

[donat]

#26743 (comment)

... we actually want to get rid of the property altogether. The Gradle libs URLs was a workaround because the localGroovy dependency is handled in Gradle in a special way. We aim to simplify Gradle and making localGroovy resolvable/configurable via dependency management.

[akiraly]

@donat thanks for scoping this into 8.9. One more idea/question: would it be possible to not do the automatic/implicit localGroovy resolution at all when a project is only using the Kotlin DSL?

[donat]

This is not my area of expertise, but my understanding is that some Groovy bits are part of the Gradle API. For example, we still have a few methods taking Closure parameter (example: Project.java). Also, the Kotlin DSL offers interoperability with Groovy scripts (example: withGroovyBuiler). Because of this, I assume we need the localGroovy dependency, even when only the the Kotlin DSL is being used in the project, at least for the time being.

[big-guy]

We want the localGroovy() dependency to behave like a regular dependency with capabilities and participation in dependency conflict handling.

As it exists today, it acts like a file collection dependency and is invisible to dependency resolution.

A couple of ideas for a solution:

• Make file collection dependencies a part of the graph
• Make localGroovy add a regular dependency and use special handling to use the Gradle distribution like a repository