In the case of Groovy that OP mentioned, that's wrong. This is what it looks like in Groovy[1]: @Grab(group='org.springframework', module='spring-orm', version

In the case of Groovy that OP mentioned, that's wrong. This is what it looks like in Groovy[1]: @Grab(group='org.springframework', module='spring-orm', version='3.2.5.RELEASE') import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate This provides the dependency's coordinates... but not where it comes from. You can define where it comes from by configuring Repositories (normally done by modifying the M2 settings file). This is how Java has always done it in Maven and Gradle, even Ant long time ago. And this works really well! Never seen anyone complaining about how that works. [1] http://docs.groovy-lang.org/latest/html/documentation/grape.html http://docs.groovy-lang.org/latest/html/documentation/grape....