I had struggled with Gradle off and on for something like five years before eventually learning that Gradle files were executable code files (as opposed to static data files such as .ini) written in Groovy (as opposed to some unique esoteric Gradle lang), and the code within them interacts with implicitly declared objects.

All of that could have been figured out very quickly with a cursory look over the documentation. I just never read it until way past the time I should have. That's on me. I just wanted the stupid magic Gradle incantation that would get my stupid Minecraft mod to compile.

Also, I gotta say, holy crap I hate Groovy. All of its syntax ""sugar"" just makes it hard to read unless you already know what's up. The unique ways it makes code look like not code was the bulk of the reason why I took so long to figure out that Gradle files were code in the first place.

I know you can write Gradle files in Java instead of Groovy, but at this point that just seems wrong. Build files shouldn't look like source files. I have no objective justification for this, it just doesn't feel like the way.