When a dependency artifact is available on the local filesystem, it usually doesn't make sense to copy this file into the cache. The purpose of the cache is to keep a temporary copy of any artifacts that would be expensive to re-fetch: local files usually don't meet this criteria and keeping an additional copy would be wasteful.

However, there are times when the filesystem is slow to access (eg a network share), and caching would be useful. Currently there is no mechanism for telling Gradle to cache the artifacts in these cases.

A way to instruct Gradle to cache files from a local repository is something we'd like to add. (And perhaps a way to instruct Gradle NOT to cache files from a remote repository)

This is a major flaw in my opinion.
We have a network share as corporate repository.
There are multiple reasons why it is a bad idea not to cache those files.

• The network may be slow sometimes or for some people that are connected via VPN always
• The network may be down, e. g. if you travel with your laptop
• The server is under more load than necessary
• The network is under more load than necessary
• ...

Please add this possibility.
My current workaround is to have a local copy of the whole repository on my disk and have the repository location configurable.

With 1.0-rc1 using FileSystemResolver also does not cache the libraries anymore. How do I get the libraries to be cached again?

Just for others if they have the same issue, I found a new workaround:

repositories {
   add(new org.apache.ivy.plugins.resolver.ChainResolver()) {
      add new org.apache.ivy.plugins.resolver.FileSystemResolver()
      resolvers[0].identity {
         name = 'ivy'
         addIvyPattern "$publicRepoDir/ivy/$GRADLE_IVY_PATTERN"
         addArtifactPattern "$publicRepoDir/ivy/$GRADLE_ARTIFACT_PATTERN"
         checkmodified = true
      }
   }
}

It would seem the ivy resolvers are deprecated in 2.x : https://discuss.gradle.org/t/custom-ivy-resolver-deprecation-in-gradle-2-x/7492 and the workaround posted here does not work (or maybe I failed something, I get unable to resolve class org.apache.ivy.plugins.resolver.ChainResolver). I think this feature would be important because a network shared ivyrepo is very convinient in companies.

Bjarne Boström it is deprecated since some versions and is supposed to be removed in 2.x
That is mainly what prevents me from upgrading our build past 1.12.

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Thanks again for reporting this issue. We haven't heard back from you after our inquiry from November 15th. We are closing this issue now. Please create an issue on GitHub if you still feel passionate about getting it resolved.