2. as a _consumer_, to resolve a set of dependencies to files
3. as a _producer_, to expose artifacts and their dependencies for consumption by other projects
   (such _consumable_ configurations usually represent the <<variant_model.adoc#understanding-variant-selection,variants>> the producer offers to its consumers)

For example, to express that an application `app` _depends on_ library `lib`, _at least_ one configuration is required:

include::sample[dir="snippets/java/apt/groovy", files="build.gradle[tags=annotation-processing]"]
====

== Variant aware selection

The whole set of JVM plugins leverage <<variant_model.adoc#understanding-variant-selection,variant aware resolution>> for the dependencies used.

Almost every Gradle project has the _default_ and _archives_ configurations which are added by the _base_ plugin.
These configurations are no longer used in modern Gradle builds that use <<variant_model.adoc#understanding-variant-selection,variant aware dependency management>> and the <<publishing_setup.adoc#publishing_components,new publishing plugins>>.

* Variant names must be unique,
* Each variant must have at least <<variant_attributes.adoc#variant_attributes,one attribute>>,
* Two variants cannot have the <<variant_model.adoc#understanding-variant-selection,exact same attributes and capabilities>>,
* If there are dependencies, at least one, across all variants, must carry <<rich_versions.adoc#rich-version-constraints,version information>>.

====

In this example, we use a convention plugin `myproject.java-conventions` to expose the test results from a project to Gradle's <<variant_model.adoc#understanding-variant-selection,variant aware dependency management engine>>.

The plugin declares a consumable `binaryTestResultsElements` configuration that represents the binary test results of the `test` task.

This was <<#unique_attribute_sets,previously deprecated>>.

The <<variant_model.adoc#outgoing_variants_report,`outgoingVariants` report>> will warn about this for impacted configurations.

==== Toolchain-based tasks for JVM projects