With the new plugins syntax, Gradle always goes to the default GRadle repo to resolve plugin artifacts. May use case is running Gradle completly off-line or to only resovle from a local repository. It would be nice to point Gradle to another plugin repo via a system property or somethin similar.
I have the same use case: all JARs must go through a central Artifactory instance, including Gradle plugins. The only way I found was using the old syntax.