is there a right way to add a requirement on libraries in gradle plugins that gradle provides, e.g. maven equivalent of "provided" example slf4j

Not sure what you mean. Like Maven

provided

would be

compileOnly

. But that his nothing to do with

slf4j

. On that you just depend.

when something is "provided" it is supposed to be available at runtime too

Yes. From the view of the project it is

compileOnly

though. And slf4j is not supposed to be provided.

it is provided by gradle

Ah, got you wrong. But still it shouldn't be a problem usually. But if it is, just use

compikeOnly

, where is the problem?

well... you do know that "provided" means the dependency is required and not optional. where-as compileOnly means it's not required at runtime. provided obviously means required at runtime.

well... you do know that "provided" means the dependency is required and not optional.

Yes

where-as compileOnly means it's not required at runtime.

No You do the same error Maven does. They mix the recipe to build the software with the recipe to consume the software. Your statement does the same. To build the software a "provided" lib is only needed at compile time, so

compileOnly

. The "provided" in the pom is just a documenting comment for the consumer telling "you need to provide this at runtime".