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The problem of the error message, is that you use Groovy DSL. With that often error messages are little helpful. The message you got means "somewhere within

java { ... }

you messed up the syntax, but I cannot tell you where". You typically have to randomly comment out and in things to find out what the problem is. That is one of the reasons I recommend using Kotlin DSL. You instantly get type-safe build scripts, proper helpful error messages when messing up the syntax, and an amazingly better IDE support. In your case the problem is, that

exports { ... }

is not a thing I've ever seen and I'm using Gradle since pre-1.0.

Thanks @Vampire for quick response. I might be doing it incorrectly but based on my problem statement, please suggest how can I use only certain layer as dependency between modules.

Sorry, but I have no idea what your intention is, or what your snippet is supposed to do, or where you got it from.

Ok, my intention is "I have multi modules project and I am trying to expose only API layer/package from one module to other module". And for this I was looking different approaches.

Are you using JPMS? i.e. the Java module system, so

module-info.java

and running on the module path, not class path?

Thanks @Vampire right now I am using java 8 as mentioned in my last post. So I dont think I can use module-info.java. I am attaching screenshot and I have modules in name of proj_one and proj_two and trying to achieve conditional dependency in Gradle-wise.

Ah, right, did not see the Java 8, then of course no JPMS, yes.

Thanks @Vampire it makes sense and thanks a lot for all your inputs