Can you give some details about the platform you run gradle? And also the output of gradle -v?
If you could also create a small project that reproduces the problem that would be awesome.
A workaround that might be useful for a time being is to run gradle in quiet mode. From the stack trace I gather that gradle is downloading dependencies and for one of those dependencies the progress logger cannot be notified and hence a failure. Maybe you could nail down this dependency and we could reproduce it.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the reply
I found the problem. We had a dependency on displaytag, which worked fine when pointing at maven central, but broke when pointing at our local artifactory. I compared the poms and somehow our pom had a parent project defined that referenced itself. It seemed to cause gradle to go into an infinite loop for a while and then crashed.
Not sure there's anything to be done from a gradle perspective, although a more helpful error message would have been nice! 
Are you saying that one of the POMs was referencing itself as its parent? I think this should be handled gracefully. I've created a JIRA issue.
As of Gradle-1.4-rc-1, a self-referencing parent POM will result in:
Caused by: org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ModuleVersionResolveException: Could not resolve org:child:1.0.
Required by:
:unknown-test-32:unspecified
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.resolve(UserResolverChain.java:65)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.clientmodule.ClientModuleResolver.resolve(ClientModuleResolver.java:36)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.projectmodule.ProjectDependencyResolver.resolve(ProjectDependencyResolver.java:45)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.LazyDependencyToModuleResolver$StaticVersionResolveResult.resolve(LazyDependencyToModuleResolver.java:91)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DependencyGraphBuilder$ModuleVersionSelectorResolveState.resolve(DependencyGraphBuilder.java:936)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DependencyGraphBuilder$DefaultModuleRevisionResolveState.getDescriptor(DependencyGraphBuilder.java:650)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DependencyGraphBuilder$DependencyEdge.calculateTargetConfigurations(DependencyGraphBuilder.java:333)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DependencyGraphBuilder$DependencyEdge.attachToTargetConfigurations(DependencyGraphBuilder.java:309)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DependencyGraphBuilder.traverseGraph(DependencyGraphBuilder.java:128)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DependencyGraphBuilder.resolve(DependencyGraphBuilder.java:64)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.resolveengine.DefaultDependencyResolver.resolve(DefaultDependencyResolver.java:69)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.CacheLockingArtifactDependencyResolver$1.create(CacheLockingArtifactDependencyResolver.java:36)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.CacheLockingArtifactDependencyResolver$1.create(CacheLockingArtifactDependencyResolver.java:34)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultCacheAccess.useCache(DefaultCacheAccess.java:124)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.useCache(DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.java:130)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.DefaultCacheLockingManager.useCache(DefaultCacheLockingManager.java:53)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.CacheLockingArtifactDependencyResolver.resolve(CacheLockingArtifactDependencyResolver.java:34)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.SelfResolvingDependencyResolver.resolve(SelfResolvingDependencyResolver.java:39)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ShortcircuitEmptyConfigsArtifactDependencyResolver.resolve(ShortcircuitEmptyConfigsArtifactDependencyResolver.java:44)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ErrorHandlingArtifactDependencyResolver.resolve(ErrorHandlingArtifactDependencyResolver.java:37)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.configurations.DefaultConfiguration.resolveNow(DefaultConfiguration.java:240)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.configurations.DefaultConfiguration.getResolvedConfiguration(DefaultConfiguration.java:230)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.configurations.DefaultConfiguration$ConfigurationFileCollection.getFiles(DefaultConfiguration.java:459)
... 61 more
Caused by: org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ModuleVersionResolveException: Could not resolve org:parent:1.0.
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.resolve(UserResolverChain.java:65)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.LoopbackDependencyResolver$1.create(LoopbackDependencyResolver.java:69)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.LoopbackDependencyResolver$1.create(LoopbackDependencyResolver.java:63)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultCacheAccess.useCache(DefaultCacheAccess.java:124)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.useCache(DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.java:130)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.DefaultCacheLockingManager.useCache(DefaultCacheLockingManager.java:53)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.LoopbackDependencyResolver.getDependency(LoopbackDependencyResolver.java:63)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.parser.GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.parseOtherPom(GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.java:269)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.parser.GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.parseDescriptor(GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.java:106)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.cachemanager.AbstractRepositoryCacheManager.parseModuleDescriptor(AbstractRepositoryCacheManager.java:80)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.cachemanager.DownloadingRepositoryCacheManager.cacheModuleDescriptor(DownloadingRepositoryCacheManager.java:149)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.ExternalResourceResolver.parse(ExternalResourceResolver.java:226)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.ExternalResourceResolver.getDependency(ExternalResourceResolver.java:189)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.MavenResolver.getDependency(MavenResolver.java:76)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.ExternalResourceResolverAdapter.getDependency(ExternalResourceResolverAdapter.java:35)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository$1.run(CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository.java:50)
at org.gradle.internal.Factories$1.create(Factories.java:22)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultCacheAccess.longRunningOperation(DefaultCacheAccess.java:179)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultCacheAccess.longRunningOperation(DefaultCacheAccess.java:232)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.longRunningOperation(DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.java:142)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.DefaultCacheLockingManager.longRunningOperation(DefaultCacheLockingManager.java:49)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository.getDependency(CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository.java:48)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.CachingModuleVersionRepository.getDependency(CachingModuleVersionRepository.java:88)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.IvyContextualiser$1.invoke(IvyContextualiser.java:44)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain$RepositoryResolveState.resolve(UserResolverChain.java:185)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.findLatestModule(UserResolverChain.java:97)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.findLatestModule(UserResolverChain.java:80)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.resolve(UserResolverChain.java:54)
... 83 more
Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.ExternalResourceResolver.getDependency(ExternalResourceResolver.java:148)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.parser.GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.parseOtherPom(GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.java:269)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.parser.GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.parseDescriptor(GradlePomModuleDescriptorParser.java:106)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.cachemanager.AbstractRepositoryCacheManager.parseModuleDescriptor(AbstractRepositoryCacheManager.java:80)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.cachemanager.DownloadingRepositoryCacheManager.cacheModuleDescriptor(DownloadingRepositoryCacheManager.java:149)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.ExternalResourceResolver.parse(ExternalResourceResolver.java:226)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.ExternalResourceResolver.getDependency(ExternalResourceResolver.java:189)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.repositories.resolver.MavenResolver.getDependency(MavenResolver.java:76)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.ExternalResourceResolverAdapter.getDependency(ExternalResourceResolverAdapter.java:35)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository$1.run(CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository.java:50)
at org.gradle.internal.Factories$1.create(Factories.java:22)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultCacheAccess.longRunningOperation(DefaultCacheAccess.java:179)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultCacheAccess.longRunningOperation(DefaultCacheAccess.java:232)
at org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.longRunningOperation(DefaultPersistentDirectoryStore.java:142)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.DefaultCacheLockingManager.longRunningOperation(DefaultCacheLockingManager.java:49)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository.getDependency(CacheLockingModuleVersionRepository.java:48)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.CachingModuleVersionRepository.getDependency(CachingModuleVersionRepository.java:88)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.IvyContextualiser$1.invoke(IvyContextualiser.java:44)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain$RepositoryResolveState.resolve(UserResolverChain.java:185)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.findLatestModule(UserResolverChain.java:97)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.findLatestModule(UserResolverChain.java:80)
at org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.ivyservice.ivyresolve.UserResolverChain.resolve(UserResolverChain.java:54)
... 110 more
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