Cannot define anything in publishing block of build.gradle - maven

Question

I'm trying to create a library and publish it to maven local. When I start trying to add a MavenPublication to publications, the IDE gives it a dotted underline like it's an unresolved reference. Same with parameters like from and artifact.
If I uncomment the pom block, gradle sync fails and says Cause: invalid type code: B3, ultimately because of org.gradle.internal.metaobject.AbstractDynamicObject$CustomMessageMissingMethodException on one of the parameters within.
This build.gradle file is in one of my modules. The top level build.gradle is pretty simple.
buildscript {
repositories {
mavenLocal()
mavenCentral()
maven { url "https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/" }
maven { url "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/" }
jcenter()
}
dependencies {
}
}
allprojects {
apply plugin: "idea"
group = 'com.mygroup'
version = '1.0.0'
repositories {
mavenLocal()
mavenCentral()
jcenter()
maven { url "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/" }
maven { url "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/releases/" }
}
}
And here's the module's build.gradle.
plugins {
id 'java-library'
id 'maven-publish'
id 'signing'
}
task sourcesJar(type: Jar) {
from sourceSets.main.allJava
archiveClassifier = 'sources'
}
task javadocJar(type: Jar) {
from javadoc
archiveClassifier = 'javadoc'
}
publishing {
publications {
mavenJava(MavenPublication) {
artifactId = 'mylibrary'
from components.java
artifact sourcesJar
artifact javadocJar
pom {
name = 'MyLibrary'
organization {
name 'MyOrg'
url 'www.myurl.com'
}
}
}
}
}
signing {
sign publishing.publications.mavenJava
}
javadoc {
if(JavaVersion.current().isJava9Compatible()) {
options.addBooleanOption('html5', true)
}
}
I'm using Gradle 5.1.1, IntelliJ Idea 2019.1.2, and JDK 12.0.1.

Answer 1

As it's a bit long explanation, let me clarify the situation here instead of replying in the comments to my question about providing the complete example with a pom-offender block. As the OP has already figured out, the problem is in the missing = sign. It's necessary for pom.organization and must not be present in the plugin.id.
For plugins block, it's a well-known Groovy convention of method call, which allow us to omit parentheses. And you can't use assignment here because id is not a property of a class. Look at the Gradle source code for plugins block.
However, if we look at pom.organization block we see the receiver of Action is MavenPomOrganization which has getName() and getUrl() returning Property<String> and not taking any arguments. From bare Groovy standpoint, it's definitely not the case of omitting parentheses. But I don't know for sure how the assignment syntax (name = 'MyOrg') works here under the hood. At first glance I can just speculate that it's some sort of Gradle magic using Groovy magic, e.g. AST transformation or something