Gradle Plugins on Maven Central fail to resolve

[veyndan]

How are you running Renovate?

A Mend.io-hosted app

Which platform you running Renovate on?

GitHub.com

Which version of Renovate are you using?

44.3.2

Please tell us more about your question or problem

Renovate incorrectly skips searching for Gradle plugins in Maven Central. For example, we depend on org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose:org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose.gradle.plugin in our build-logic as a compileOnly dependency for use by our convention plugins.

This discussion raised a similar point, but has since been locked. I don't believe that the point about looking up Gradle Plugins from Maven Central is correct. It's completely valid to look them up from Maven Central when developing convention plugins. The aforementioned plugin is indeed published to Maven Central, so it follows that they are usable from Maven Central (as we've successfully been doing when building, despite what Renovate says).

Logs (if relevant)

Logs

DEBUG: Maven: skipping Maven Central for suspected Gradle plugin "org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose:org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose.gradle.plugin"
DEBUG: Failed to look up maven package org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose:org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose.gradle.plugin: no-result
{
  "dependency": "org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose:org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose.gradle.plugin",
  "packageFile": "gradle/libs.versions.toml"
}

DEBUG: Maven: skipping Maven Central for suspected Gradle plugin "org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform:org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform.gradle.plugin"
DEBUG: Failed to look up maven package org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform:org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform.gradle.plugin: no-result
{
  "dependency": "org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform:org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform.gradle.plugin",
  "packageFile": "gradle/libs.versions.toml"
}

[jamietanna]

Ah, interesting!

In which case, yes we can re-add this plugin for lookup. As you may have seen from that discussion, we intentionally try not to look up .gradle.plugin to avoid strain on Maven Central infrastructure

Are you aware of any other Gradle Plugins you use that are on Maven Central?

[veyndan]

Thanks! In terms of plugins from Maven Central, we use:

com.apollographql.apollo:apollo-gradle-plugin
com.diffplug.spotless:spotless-plugin-gradle
org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin
org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform:org.jetbrains.kotlin.multiplatform.gradle.plugin
org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose:org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose.gradle.plugin

The list isn't static though does slowly morph over time.

Take this idea with a grain of salt as I know nothing about the internals of Renovate, but could the Gradle Plugin Portal be queried initially, and if there's nothing, then request it from Maven Central? I'm assuming that the vast majority of plugins will be resolvable by the Gradle Plugin Portal, which would mean that Maven Central is never queried, reducing the number of requests to Maven Central, while still resolving dependencies that are only available on Maven Central.

[Churro]

I suspect the problem in this case elsewhere. https://plugins.gradle.org/plugin/org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose/2.0.20 (and other versions) exist in plugins.gradle.org and this domain is added to the list of lookup sources by default (analogous to what gradle does).

A quick test without any further config presented me with an update.

[versions]
kotlin = "2.0.20"

[plugins]
jetbrainsComposeCompiler = { id = "org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose", version.ref = "kotlin" } 

->

DEBUG: packageFiles with updates (repository=churro/retest, baseBranch=master)
       "config": {
         "gradle": [
           {
             "packageFile": "gradle/libs.versions.toml",
             "datasource": "maven",
             "deps": [
               {
                 "depType": "plugin",
                 "depName": "org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose",
                 "packageName": "org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose:org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose.gradle.plugin",
                 "currentValue": "2.0.20",
                 "managerData": {
                   "fileReplacePosition": 22,
                   "packageFile": "gradle/libs.versions.toml"
                 },
                 "sharedVariableName": "kotlin",
                 "fileReplacePosition": 22,
                 "datasource": "maven",
                 "registryUrls": ["https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/"],
                 "updates": [
                   {
                     "bucket": "non-major",
                     "newVersion": "2.4.10",
                     "newValue": "2.4.10",
                     "releaseTimestamp": "2026-07-14T10:36:04.000Z",
                     "newVersionAgeInDays": 18,
                     "newMajor": 2,
                     "newMinor": 4,
                     "newPatch": 10,
                     "updateType": "minor",
                     "isBreaking": false,
                     "libYears": 1.8932378551496702,
                     "branchName": "renovate/kotlin"
                   }
                 ],
                 "versioning": "gradle",
                 "warnings": [],
                 "registryUrl": "https://plugins.gradle.org/m2",
                 "packageScope": "org.jetbrains.kotlin.plugin.compose",
                 "respectLatest": false,
                 "currentVersion": "2.0.20",
                 "currentVersionTimestamp": "2024-08-22T09:50:15.000Z",
                 "currentVersionAgeInDays": 709,
                 "isSingleVersion": true,
                 "fixedVersion": "2.0.20"
               }
             ]
           }
         ]
       }