I'm learning how to use gradle to build my java applications. Currently I'm using eclipse with buildship plugin. I have it building my JARs and WARs, and also have gradle running my JUnit and Selenium tests. I like that it pulls in the dependencies I need as I need them during development.
It seems like it would make sense if my build.gradle files define my dependencies to build and run my application in dev then I should be able to use them for deployment. Otherwise I have to retrieve all my dependencies by some other means and deploy to my production environment, and managing 2 different methods of retrieving and deploying dependencies seems to be a risk for problems.
Can I use gradle or at least my build.gradle files in some way for my deployment?
Take a look at the gradle distribution plugin. This plugin adds tasks to create an "install folder" or an archive file (zip or tar) containing all the dependencies you'll need to execute/deploy your application.
Gradle application plugin also generates shell/bat scripts to invoke your application.