The reason why Gradle needs this junk in the first place is that they aggressively change and deprecate APIs. Tried to build a 6 year old project today and of c

The reason why Gradle needs this junk in the first place is that they aggressively change and deprecate APIs. Tried to build a 6 year old project today and of course nothing works. Gradle wrapper proved pretty useful here. Make, on the other hand, has maintained almost perfect compatibility since it's inception.