Currently, in Gradle 1.2, one can specify dependency version to be x.y.+ and have Gradle build the project with any x.y.z version of that dependency. Some libraries use semantic versioning (major.minor.patch), but for patch releases only, so not for initial release. It would be nice if Gradle x.y.+ support was extended to fallback to x.y when there is no x.y.z version of a dependency.
Thanks for the idea. I’ve raised GRADLE-3117 to track this.
If you’d be interested in contributing a solution for this, you might want to open a discussion on the gradle developers list (http://www.gradle.org/development).