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https://github.com/gradle/gradle/pull/23639 fixed in Gradle 8.1

Doesn’t address all the challenges but this snippet for dependencies allows to use the plugin id instead of coordinates:

public fun DependencyHandlerScope.plugin(id: String, version: String): String =
    "$id:$id.gradle.plugin:$version"

public fun DependencyHandlerScope.plugin(plugin: Provider<PluginDependency>): Provider<String> =
    plugin.map { "${it.pluginId}:${it.pluginId}.gradle.plugin:${it.version}" }

and even if it shows up as red in the IDE in earlier versions, it still works

this project is stuck on v7 for now

I use version catalog plugin aliases even in v7 and ignore the IDE when it isn't being helpful