I have some fairly long tests in my buildSrc build which I sometimes want to skip during development, to see the effect that template changes have. It's a report generator and sometimes I just want to tweak the templates without having to update all the tests; then later I will update them when I'm happy with the output. 

I was able to implement skipping tests within the buildSrc build.gradle with the following configuration:

```
test {
    // skip all tests if gradle run with -Pnotests
    try { if (project.ext.notests != null)
        println "skipping tests"
        exclude '**'
    } catch (MissingPropertyException e) {}
}

```

(and if you have a better way to detect an optional parameter I'd love to see it)

However, this doesn't work from the main gradle project. I have tried everything I can think of to try to pass the parameter through configuration, short of setting an environment variable, but I doubt that would work either. 

In general I find I can't configure buildSrc whatsoever from the main project. I can't find any way to get at variables, eg project.ext.foo or ext.foo, nor a way to configure the buildSrc 'project' as there is no section in main build.gradle. It's like it exists on an island of its own. I've tried:

* project.ext.notests = true
* test {...} in main
* allprojects { test {...} }
* subprojects { test {...} }
* dependencies { test {...} }
* buildscript { test {...} }

Is there a way around this, or do I have to refactor my whole project to move the reporting code elsewhere and maybe then I can configure it and skip tests? 

Thanks in advance.