Netbeans Plugin-Development and dependent Plugins

Hi,
I am currently looking into the netbeans gradle plugin https://github.com/kelemen/netbeans-gradle-project and am wondering what is the right way to actually test/run the plugin in my development enviornment when it depends on another plugin? I.e. this plugin depends on Groovy-Grails Plugin.
I am not sure if the situation is complicated by the fact that the netbeans-gradle-project actually builds itself by a groovy build.
What i habe been doing up to know is:

1. "gradle run" t build and run the IDE with the netbeans-gradle-project installed.
2. Due to the dependency on Groovy-Grails plugin it tells me about the missing dependency on startup so, the plugin is deactivated.
3. I install the Groovy-Grails plugin manually via teh plugin manager
4. I run "gradle run" again.

I assume when i will do a clean build i have to install the plugin again. Also, it seems like manual work that should be possible to do in an automated way.

Can someone give me a hint how other people go about developing plugins that have dependcies on other plugin? Does no even have to be specifially for gradle-based build. Maybe i can interpolate how others are solving it for ant/maven-based plugin-build...

Thanks in advance,
Daniel