I am creating a CLI application in Kotlin with Gradle (Kotlin DSL) as the build system. The CLI will support plugins that will be loaded via ServiceLoader. In order to do so, the plugins must be in the classpath, and I want users to be able to load their own plugins easily.

I thought about a default directory for the plugin jar files, e.g. $HOME/.my-app/plugins, and add it to the classpath, so that ServiceLoader can discover the plugins.
I am planning to compile the application with the application Gradle plugin. Is there a way to add $HOME/.my-app/plugins to the classpath in the Gradle build configuration in a platform-independent way? I don’t quite know how to do so, since the structure of the home directory depends on the OS.

Am I on the right path? Or is there a simpler way to manage plugin installations?