<@U19P7SPFW> <@U6S5Z9F8F> <@U0QBCLV62> Currently ...

# gradle

[jlleitschuh]

@eskatos @eriwen @bamboo

Currently the Kotlin DSL doesn't support the Model DSL, nor will it probably ever. However this causes limitations in the Kotlin DSL because it has absolutely no support for C++ cross compilation.

I'm working with WPILib (and have for a long time) who is planning on converting all of their ANT based compilation/deploy logic.
The Gradle build will be deployed to thousands of HS teams to use to develop and test their robot code. Some teams write their robot code in Java (which would work fine with the current Kotlin DSL) and some write their code in C++ which has to be cross compiled using an ARM toolchain. There is an internal debate going on right now regarding whether or not the new Kotlin DSL should be used, or if the Groovy DSL should be used.

Due to the current limitations of the Kotlin DSL not supporting cross compilation the team is leaning towards implementing the build logic in Groovy.

Personally, I think this is a shame. I think it would be awesome for the first impression of Gradle for potentially thousands of students and their mentors to be in the strongly typed build language Kotlin.

Do you have any thoughts/ideas in this space?

These are the open issues currently driving the decision towards using Groovy over Kotlin:

https://github.com/gradle/gradle-native/issues/487
https://github.com/gradle/gradle-native/issues/177
https://github.com/gradle/gradle-native/issues/160
https://github.com/gradle/gradle-native/issues/5
https://github.com/gradle/gradle-native/issues/106
https://github.com/gradle/gradle-native/issues/208