Plugin to allow IDEs edit properties of the build

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1

From time to time there is a request to provide IDE support for adding dependencies from the GUI. As is now with Gradle, this is not practically possible since it would require editing an arbitrary code. My proposal would be to create a plugin which reads dependencies from an XML (or whatever editable format) and adds it to the appropriate configuration.

For example, this is how such a file could look like:

<root>
  <dependencies>
    <compile>
      <dependency>com.google.guava:guava:19.0</dependency>
      <dependency>
        <group>org.slf4j</group>
        <name>slf4j-api</name>
        <version>1.7.13</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <file>${projectDir}/libs/mylib1.jar</file>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <file>${rootProjectDir}/libs/myCommonLib.jar</file>
      </dependency>
    </compile>
  </dependencies>
</root>

Of course, this is only an example and many other formats as feasible. The most important thing is that it should be a standard, so that such a file can be transferred across IDEs.

Also, in the future I can imagine many features for such a plugin but I think this is enough for starter.

Rationale

Some might argue that it is easy to add new dependencies to a build script (which is true). However, there are very beginner coders (someone has to start somewhere), who know very little and forcing them to learn Gradle adds an additional burden. That is, for them it is probably more sensible to choose Maven (or no build tool at all) because then they can click around in the IDE and deal only with coding (which is their primary interest at the moment).