Resolved by using `ResolverStrategy` and reflective instantiation to compatible with multiple gradle releases.

This change may have uncovered a bug in Gradle's dependency resolution listing. It results in a NPE in certain scenarios by providing incorrect library listings. The assumption is that declared = (resolved + unresolved) dependencies. Instead the resolved dependencies includes _extra_ dependencies from adjacent projects. This resulted in a NPE as the mapping for a key was not found (`comparator.compare(version, currentVersions[key]) > 0`).

For more details see the plugin's [issue]([1]https://github.com/ben-manes/gradle-v...).
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[1] https://github.com/ben-manes/gradle-versions-plugin/issues/8#issuecomment-24377832

Thanks for the feedback. Do you have a self-contained reproducible example for this (outside your plugin)?

I can probably get an example, using the plugin, to fail for debugging. If I can get that far then since the plugin is simple gradle api calls, we can decide whether to pull out those calls or debug with the plugin. I would write this as a spock integration test, but a previous Gradle version broke the test's ability to resolve dependencies from maven central.

Here is a [minimal example]([1]https://github.com/ben-manes/gradle-1...). It clearly demonstrates that v1.7 and v1.8-rc-1 differ.
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[1] https://github.com/ben-manes/gradle-1.8-rc-1-bug

See forum entry for further information (somehow didn't get synced to JIRA).

This is happening again

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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.