I am attaching a verifier method that can be called after resolves until such point as Gradle gets fixed. Here is output from using the method on a configuration which has resolved a dependency list including the relocated activation and jdom jars.

Update: Oops. Add a couple spaces before the word "ARTIFACT" in the script. Jira won't let me update or delete the attachment.

gradlew -b tst.gradle
:d

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Build file '/home/blaine/gradle/webapp-base/tst.gradle' line: 83

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':d'.
Cause: Unsatisfied dependencies for configuration 'c':
    1: jdom:jdom:1.1  ARTIFACT: jdom jar
    2: activation:activation:1.0.2  ARTIFACT: activation jar


* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debu option to get more log output.

BUILD FAILED

Total time: 5.332 secs
beyla$ 

Resolve verification method.

Call like

verifyResolve(configuration.c)

or

verifyResolve(configuration['c'])

Update: Sorry to keep bumping this, but this could cause frustration if not known.
Gradle swallows exceptions thrown by inline tasks, so if you do this

beaver.dependsOn << { verifyResolve(configurations.beaver) }

instead of

task namedTask << { verifyResolve(configurations.beaver) }
beaver.dependsOn << namedTask

verification failures will produce a generic message like "ERRORS a required artifact is not listed by module descriptor: *!.*". If you get that, just re-run Gradle with the -s switch to see the real message with list of failed dependencies.

While we still don't handle relocation directives correctly, we now complain when the artifact is not available.