Boilerplate project configuration in Gradle with Gradle Kotlin DSL

If you want to benefit from all the Gradle Kotlin DSL goodness you should strive to apply all plugins using the plugins {} block. See https://github.com/gradle/kotlin-dsl/blob/master/doc/getting-started/Configuring-Plugins.md

You can manage plugin repositories and resolution strategies (e.g. their version) in your settings files. Starting with Gradle 4.4 this file can be written using the Kotlin DSL, aka settings.gradle.kts. See https://docs.gradle.org/4.4-rc-1/release-notes.html.

With this in mind you could then have a centralized Settings script plugin that sets things up and apply it in your builds settings.gradle.kts files:

// corporate-settings.gradle.kts
pluginManagement {
    repositories {
        maven {
            name = "Corporate Nexus"
            url = uri("https://example.com/repository/maven-public")
        }
        gradlePluginPortal()
    }
}

and:

// settings.gradle.kts
apply(from = "https://url.to/corporate-settings.gradle.kts")

Then in your project build scripts you can simply request plugins from your corporate repository:

// build.gradle.kts
plugins {
    id("my-corporate-plugin") version "1.2.3"
}

If you want your project build scripts in a multi-project build to not repeat the plugin version you can do so with Gradle 4.3 by declaring versions in your root project. Note that you also could set the versions in settings.gradle.kts using pluginManagement.resolutionStrategy if having all builds use the same plugins version is what you need.

Also note that for all this to work, your plugins must be published with their plugin marker artifact. This is easily done by using the java-gradle-plugin plugin.