One option would be to provide different type of source sets. Java, UnitTest, ... If you declare a unit test source set, the test task would be automatically created and be wired with the confs. The same possibly for other types of test.

In this vein, I tried what we discussed in terms of "matrix" style tests in terms of doing "apply" on a matrix.gradle file. This "works" up until the point that the dependencies are used. I build a classpath for the test task using

is the Configuration which contains the jdbc driver dependencies (I debugged and verified the proper dependency instances are there). However, running leads to an error that the JDBC driver class could not be found. Is this perhaps an issue that the dependency is not "resolved"?

Sorry, I was using the wrong method to add the dependency. I had been using project.getDependencies().module(...); switching to project.getDependencies().add(...) fixed this.

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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.