Working with build.gradle dependencies straight away in IDE

I'm the developer of the NetBeans integration of Gradle. In NetBeans, if you edit your build script, you have to reload the project for NetBeans to detect the changes. You can reload the project by selecting "Reload project" in the context menu of the project. In practice, you should only reload, if you have adjusted the compile time dependencies.

Since plugin version 1.2.7, if you are using Gradle 1.9 or above (Gradle 1.8 does not work properly with NetBeans: debugging features will be broken), more exotic non-standard configurations are detected automatically as well (adding a new source set with different set of dependencies, provided dependencies, ect.).

I have set up a Wiki page which you might want to read if you would like to know more.

It depends on your IDE. In IntelliJIDEA, you use the Gradle support to access the JetGradle plugin. You can use that to import dependencies and make sure the IDE is aware of any changes to your build script.

Personally, I find the Grade support in IntelliJ merely adequate. It isn't nearly as good as the Maven support. But I also prefer Gradle so much more to Maven that I live with it.

Note also that Gradle provides an IntelliJIDEA plugin. This enables you to build a project in IntelliJ from the build file. This is good but not as good as I would like.

Hopefully others can chime in on the pros and cons of other IDE's when it comes to Gradle.