what is behind modules, groovy and reflection

[soloturn]

setup development of terasology works with:

❯ ./groovyw module init iota

it downloads an ancient gradle version, uses a quite old jdk-11. what is the reasoning to do it that way, with groovy, reflection, and modules, instead of a "normal" java build?

[Cervator]

Hey there :-)

Define "normal" Java build? 😅

Terasology has been around for quite a while and with sporadic efforts it is limited what gets upgraded. There's on-going work now to upgrade the Java version and Gradle.

The groovyw bit is some utility to make it easier to deal with cobbling together a workspace with a given set of modules, where "iota" is a basic starter collection.

Reflection is just used in various ways based on whatever made sense at the time, really. Happy to hear of interest to improve things, especially if that comes with an offer to help! :-)

[skaldarnar]

Hi @soloturn, and welcome.

I just saw #5111 popping, pretty much the right time to look into Gradle and project setup, as we are trying to revamp it.

We've usually tried to stay up-to-date at least with the Gradle releases, but the project has gone through some quiet phase for a couple of months. @keturn started working on this (see #4653) but went on hiatus soon after.
Currently @DarkWeird and @BenjaminAmos are picking this back up, see #5109.

The "ancient Java" part is different though, as we cannot just jump to a newer version. Some details can be found in #3976 if you want to read up.

There are active discussion happening on our Discord, we'd love to have you join the conversation, especially if you have some previous experience either with upgrading a code base to newer Gradle/Java.