Using Version Placeholders ("_") in dependencies.constraints Blocks

[Centronias]

This doesn't seem to work, the version placeholder (_) is not replaced with the version
from the properties file; instead the version is literally "_" as far as Gradle is concerned.

// versions.properties
version.com.fasterxml.jackson.core=2.13.3


// build.gradle.kts
dependencies {
    implementation(kotlin("stdlib-jdk8"))

    // Various implementation dependencies...

    constraints {
        // Constrain Jackson version used as transitive dependency.
        implementation("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:_") {
            because("the version we get transitively has a vulnerability")
        }
    }
}

a workaround is to use versionFor(...), but that ends up being less than idiomatic because it
requires the group and module to be specified twice:

dependencies {
    constraints {
        val version = versionFor("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:_")
        implementation("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:$version")

        // or worse...
        implementation(
            "com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:$versionFor(" com . fasterxml . jackson . core : jackson -databind:_
            ")"
        )
    }
}

a workaround to the downside of this workaround is to define a helper like

fun Project.versioned(dep: String) = "$dep:${versionFor("$dep:_")}"

dependencies {
    constraints {
        // used like this: (note the absence of version at all)
        implementation("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-data")
    }
}

All of this is to ask if there is a better way to handle this situation. Should normal version
placeholders work inside of constraint versions? Am I just doing something wrong, or is there
a better solution to this problem?

If there's not a better solution, perhaps this question can be promoted to an enhancement request
to make version placeholders work inside of constraints blocks :)