There are multiple issues with the mavenLocal() repository which mean it is problematic to enable. We have to workaround these issues on our CI system with code such as:

        if(!isCiBuild) {
            mavenLocal()
        }

The major issues we have found are:

1) Gradle is not able to handle cases where there is a POM and no JAR file.

When a maven local repository contains a POM file, but no JAR you get a dependency resolve error. Expected behavior would be to just download the JAR and continue. This is very painful as you have to enable Gradle debugging to find out why the JAR didn't resolve even though your repository definitives seem correct.

2) There are problems with mavenLocal when using the signing plugin.

If you are using the signing plugin and mavenLocal you end up with errors such as:

Execution failed for task ':grails-datastore-gorm-dynamodb:ideaModule'.
> Could not resolve all dependencies for configuration 'detachedConfiguration4'.
   > Module version group:org.grails, module:grails-datastore-gorm-dynamodb, version:0.1.2.BUILD-SNAPSHOT, configuration:detachedConfiguration4 declares a dependency on configuration 'signatures' which is not declared in the module descriptor for group:org.grails, module:grails-datastore-gorm, version:2.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT

The error makes no sense to the user as it is some internal dependency information that doesn't resolve.

These problems combined make it a painful experience trying to use the Maven local cache, and since Gradle doesn't appear to provide a way to install a dependency into its own cache, it makes local development of inter project dependencies very painful