The following dependency definition causes gradle to put the jar in the classpath and to copy it into the resulting web archive's lib folder, which is perfectly fine.

// makes it in the classpath and in the resulting war
compile 'org.springframework:spring-web:3.0.5.RELEASE'

Using the eclipseClasspath task the following entry is generated (among others):

<classpathentry sourcepath="/path/to/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE-sources.jar" kind="lib" path="/path/to/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar" exported="true"/>

While this puts the jar into the class path, it gets neither exported in Eclipse (e.g. using the 'export to war file' wizard) nor published to a server.

Fixing this problem by changing the project deployment assembly leads to slightly different entries:

<classpathentry sourcepath="/path/to/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE-sources.jar" kind="lib" path="/path/to/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar" exported="true">
<attributes>
<attribute name="org.eclipse.jst.component.dependency" value="/WEB-INF/lib"/>
</attributes>
</classpathentry>

The dependencies in the compile and runtime configuration should be created in the latter form because they are most likely intended to be shipped.