Migrate from Apache Ant to Gradle

[Arthur Le Saint]

Issues #39 (resolved) and #386 (open) already mention this issue but with a migration to Apache Maven. Gradle has since been picked up by Google for Android. It will help us especially with the web functionalities coming in soon.

When this issue is closed, #386 should be closed as well.

[Matthias Schoettle]

Personally, I would prefer Gradle over Maven as well. However, as far as I know there are exists no solution with Gradle that works when using Eclipse plug-ins, unless they are in a (Maven) repository.

There exists Eclipse Tycho, it creates (locally) artifacts for Eclipse plug-ins (from their P2 repository which is the Eclipse update site thing):

https://www.eclipse.org/tycho/ https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/EclipseTycho/article.html

Assuming we get this to work, maybe it is possible to reuse that stuff within Gradle. Although that would make it more complex.

[Matthias Schoettle]

There is also Buildship which is supposed to be able to read dependencies from the MANIFEST.MF.

https://www.eclipse.org/community/eclipse_newsletter/2018/february/buildship.php

[Arthur Le Saint]

References #526: First branch commit

→ <<cset 4823c3158a33>>

[Arthur Le Saint]

Gradle Buildship is not supported enough and it's documentation is still lacking on some points. Even if Maven was the second choice, it's seems like the better option now.