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Not only the tool is infuriating, the language is baffling. With most tools the first time I ever set eyes on the configuration I had a pretty good idea what wa
by l0b0 6y ago
Not only the tool is infuriating, the language is baffling. With most tools the first time I ever set eyes on the configuration I had a pretty good idea what was going on without reading any documentation. With Gradle it's like someone invented proto-Java and just left it at that. A build file which was actual Java would be much easier to understand and most importantly edit, because then I could get the IDE to help explore the API.
As a side note, this is probably (intentionally or not) the same tactic that Microsoft used in the 00s to avoid competition: keep changing things fast so that anybody using your tool chain a) has to follow your lead to keep up, b) ends up with huge sunk cost, and c) (if they trust whoever's behind Gradle) keeps being reminded how much they innovate.
- mrec 6y agoSo much this. I've tried multiple times to grok it and it just slid straight back out of my brain leaving me with the same puddle of syntax soup I started with. I've never encountered anything else even close to this bad. Not to mention that build config is probably the absolute last place you want a weird unreadable language nobody knows, because it tends to be touched so rarely that nobody builds up any familiarity with it.
- aphexairlines 6y agoYou can write nearly all of your gradle build logic in java if you want. Place the java files to configure your gradle build in buildSrc/src/main/java, then write a single line of kotlin in your build.gradle.kts to call your java code. Here's the javadoc: https://docs.gradle.org/current/javadoc/org/gradle/api/Project.html https://docs.gradle.org/current/javadoc/org/gradle/api/Proje...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]