Move from Ant to Gradle as build system?

[smarr]

In another project, I have been using Gradle as build tool.

It makes a few things simpler and seems to be more actively maintained.

• no XML anymore
• modules/plugins for code formatting, avoiding our custom solution
• support for maven central and maven dependencies (getting rid of SOMns-deps)
• support for http mirrors (avoiding build issues when some internet service is down)
• there is probably support/plugins for JaCoCo, and CheckStyle to avoid custom code there, too

And possibly:

• we might be able to avoid having Eclipse projects in the repo, and only one truth (the gradle build file), which could make it easier to use other IDEs

[smarr]

Another benefit of moving to Gradle would be support for GitHub's dependency detection and security issue system:

https://github.com/smarr/SOMns/network/dependencies

https://help.github.com/articles/viewing-and-updating-vulnerable-dependencies-in-your-repository/