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you should probably be using https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/jvm_test_suite_plugin.html instead of custom configurations for setting up

smokeTest

Can something useful be done with custom configurations without Ant?

Yes. It has nothing to do with Ant actually… If you want to understand the concept better (shameless plug): You can jump to min 8, where I start talking about the “Configuration” concept. Basically, when you have a custom configuration like “smokeTest” you need some place where you use (i.e. resolve) it. Usually you set it as an input to a task. The task will then treat it as a “collection of files” and as soon as Gradle gets to the point where the task needs the files, it will “resolve” the dependencies (interprete the metadata / download the Jars). In your example, you would probably set “smokeTest” as the

classpath

of a

Test

Task.

I was busy otherwise, but thank you both for the helpful feedback. Jendrik Johannes' videos are great! They clarified a lot of things for me and will help me improve our build scripts.