Provide a way to exclude a transitive dependency from a shared project

Currently there is no away (via the DSL) to exclude a transitive dependency of another project in the same multi-project build.

It seems like the following should work:
dependencies {
compile project(':shared') { exclude group: 'xerces', module: 'xerces' }
}

Note: Adam Murdoch points out that this will with with an extra pair of parentheses around the project. See:
http://gradle.1045684.n5.nabble.com/Excluding-a-transitive-dependency-from-a-project-tt3344855.html