What is the purpose of Gradle?

Question

I could use a little help understanding the concepts behind Gradle(plugin v 0.7) in the context of Android Studio 0.4.0. I have not used Gradle before and it\'s causing me n

Answer 1

I understand what everyone states as far as why the online portion of Gradle is necessary, but for those of us behind firewalls at work, or when we might be working offline, it really puts a burden on us to have to go online at least once to be able to compile in offline mode.

I just don't understand why this requirement is placed on the project. What if I'm starting an entirely new project in Android Studio that I want to test a concept with? I can't do it unless I'm online at least once. What if I don't have access to internet at that time and want to do this? What then?

Seems like an unnecessary requirement that burdens the developer with unnecessary issues that could be avoided. Again, I understand the reason behind it, but still, to force a requirement of at least compiling once online in order to use offline seems a little ridiculous.

I want to use Gradle, but at this point in time, it's something we can't even use at work due to the online requirement. I'll have to work with our security department to determine what holes to punch in our firewall in order to allow this through as well as setting up our proxy correctly to allow it.

So, at this time, I cannot recommend Gradle for use at my place of employment which means we also will continue using Eclipse for Android development as opposed to Android Studio. Seems like a limiting requirement that doesn't seem necessary.