How to resolve circular dependency in Gradle

project(':project-a') {
    dependencies {
        compile project(':project-b')
    }
}

project(':project-b') {
    dependencies {
        //circular dependency to :project-a
        compile project(':project-a')
    }


   compileJava {
       doLast {
           // NOTE: project-a needs :project-b classes to be included
           // in :project-a jar file hence the copy, mostly done if we need to  
           // to support different version of the same library
           // compile each version on a separate project
          copy {
               from "$buildDir/classes/java/main"
               include '**/*.class'
               into project(':project-a').file('build/classes/java/main')

     }
   }

 }
}

product-a --> build.gradle

/**
 * Do nothing during configuration stage by
 * registering a GradleBuild task
 * will be referenced in the task compileJava doLast{}
 */
tasks.register("copyProjectBClasses", GradleBuild) {
  //we'll invoke this later
  def taskList = new ArrayList<String>()
  taskList.add(":product-b:compileJava")
  logger.lifecycle "Task to execute $taskList..."
  setTasks(taskList)
}

// make sure :project-b classes are compiled first and copied to this project before 
// all classes are added to the jar, so we do it after :project-a compiled.
compileJava {
  doLast {
    synchronized(this) {
      // create temp file to avoid circular dependency
      def newFile = new File("$buildDir/ongoingcopy.tmp")
      if (!newFile.exists()) {
        newFile.createNewFile()
        GradleBuild buildCopyProjectBClasses = tasks.getByName("copyProjectBClasses")
        buildCopyProjectBClasses.build()
      }
      newFile.delete()
    }
  }
}

Removing a circular dependency cannot be resolved with build trickery. You're going to have to refactor your modules so there is no longer a circular dependency. From your module names, and with no other information, I would think you would want to extract the part of "common" that depends on "product-*" and put it into a new module.