entangledloops

Or as I like to call it, pretentious beta.

Do we really need to keep reinventing new phrases for old concepts? Doesn’t gradle already set the entry barrier high enough without needing this kind of language to confuse everyone? 

Ugh. Talk about putting the BS in build system.

The more I use gradle, the more I feel inducted into an API-cult with the sole intent to drive all users slowly (but just tolerably slowly) insane while consuming their harddrives. Off the top of my head:

Constantly changing buildscript configurations (see the confusing history and use of the Android plugin, or the gradle plugin concept in general)

More and more blackbox behavior accompanied by a debug log so thick I’d need to invest my weekend into reading and parsing it (and a month into the accompanying documentation)

Half of the useful examples exist spread across StackOverflow instead of in the documentation (or don’t exist). Also, half the time I find a properly behaving solution, it’s barely received any praise or has negative reputation---because it’s often unreadable, to minimal fault of the author.

Complex examples of real-world behavior mostly missing. Even the “not-simplest-possible-example” is often absent and leaving me frustrated. Granted, nobody has time to write an example for everything, but often gradle outlines difficult semantics and doesn’t follow through, like task overwriting or dynamic task name generation (docs are soooo weak).

Useful examples are unreadable. Take this gem for example, which logs everything somewhere useful. It’s absolutely hideous.

And I still use it because it’s a fundamentally good idea...but come on.

I could go on, but enough ink and effort on my part has been spilled on account of gradle already today alone.

Okay, I’m tired and a being a little pessimistic here, but anyone I’ve met who’s put the real time into gradle like I have has a long list of their own complaints. Gradle developers: let’s try some more planning-phase, or at least community polling for how we’d like certain things handled before pulling the rug out beneath us.

I still hold deep hopes that something like the following is relevant:

Cue solemn music as I make the final transfer…*sniffle*….

Google RSS reader, Google answers, Google code, Google labs, and now THIS? 

What’s next, Google search?

“This section explains and lists the Video API as it was available when this document is written.”

Seems to imply the documentation is never updated, or that the code and the API are not synchronized? (Kidding.)

Encountered this gem today. It produces a hideous runtime crash from the JVM indicating something about mis-compiled bytecode.

Turns out the cause was a non-static inner class that calls super() passing along a Runnable. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with the practice, but the Runnable referred to enclosing class members! Before super() completes, the instance doesn’t exist, and therefore has no access to the enclosing this pointer. 

Solution: