Excluding Transitive jars from assembled war

Using Gradle 4.10.2
I am migrating a build from using a local library to using managed dependencies from the mavencentral.

The project is building, but now when i assemble the war im getting a ton of transitive jars included. i am only trying to include the jars listed for each compile but none of their transitives into the final war.

trying to exclude them using transitive: ‘false’ dosen’t seem to be having any effect

Here is the code snippet from my build.gradle

repositories {
mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
compile group: ‘commons-beanutils’, name: ‘commons-beanutils’, version: ‘1.7.0’ , transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘commons-codec’, name: ‘commons-codec’, version: ‘1.11’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘commons-collections’, name: ‘commons-collections’, version: ‘3.1’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘commons-configuration’, name: ‘commons-configuration’, version: ‘1.3’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘commons-lang’, name: ‘commons-lang’, version: ‘2.3’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘commons-logging’, name: ‘commons-logging’, version: ‘1.0.4’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘displaytag’, name: ‘displaytag’, version: ‘1.1’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘displaytag’, name: ‘displaytag-export-poi’, version: ‘1.1.1’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘org.owasp.encoder’, name: ‘encoder’, version: ‘1.2’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘org.owasp.encoder’, name: ‘encoder-jsp’, version: ‘1.2’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘com.lowagie’, name: ‘itext’, version: ‘1.3’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘com.fasterxml.jackson.core’, name: ‘jackson-annotations’, version: ‘2.9.0’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘com.fasterxml.jackson.core’, name: ‘jackson-databind’, version: ‘2.9.3’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘org.jasypt’, name: ‘jasypt-spring-security’, version: ‘1.1’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘log4j’, name: ‘log4j’, version: ‘1.2.14’, transitive: ‘false’
compile group: ‘mysql’, name: ‘mysql-connector-java’, version: ‘5.1.17’, transitive: ‘false’
providedCompile group: ‘javax.transaction’, name: ‘jta’, version: ‘1.1’
providedCompile ‘org.apache.tomcat:tomcat-catalina:7.0.75’
}

war {
dependsOn jar
rootSpec.exclude(’/com/’)
exclude ("**/.in")
classpath fileTree(dir:‘build/libs/’,include:’
.jar’)
}

what am i missing?

The List of included jars in the war currently is:

WEB-INF/lib/displaytag-export-poi-1.1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-configuration-1.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-1.6.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-jxpath-1.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/displaytag-1.1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.7.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jasypt-spring-security-1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jasypt-1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/acegi-security-1.0.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-codec-1.11.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-core-1.7.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-remoting-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-support-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-dao-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-2.0-m2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-lang-2.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
WEB-INF/lib/encoder-jsp-1.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/encoder-1.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/itext-1.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jackson-databind-2.9.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jackson-annotations-2.9.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/poi-3.0-FINAL.jar
WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.4.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar
WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-api-1.0.4.jar
WEB-INF/lib/xalan-2.7.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-2.9.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/junit-3.8.jar
WEB-INF/lib/ant-optional-1.5.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jdom-b9.jar
WEB-INF/lib/xercesImpl-2.2.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jcl104-over-slf4j-1.4.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/oro-2.0.8.jar
WEB-INF/lib/servlet-api-2.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.4.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.0.6.jar
WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar

but i would like it to be:

WEB-INF/lib/displaytag-export-poi-1.1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-configuration-1.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/displaytag-1.1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.7.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jasypt-1.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-codec-1.11.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.1.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-lang-2.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
WEB-INF/lib/encoder-jsp-1.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/encoder-1.2.jar
WEB-INF/lib/itext-1.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jackson-databind-2.9.3.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jackson-annotations-2.9.0.jar
WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar
WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar
WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-api-1.0.4.jar
WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-2.9.3.jar