Yes, with gradle you can create true monstrosities — and even my own projects aren’t free of those, sadly, because sometimes there’s just no alternatives.

Here’s a few examples:

Dynamically using git describe to determine version and build number (which is actually just the # of commits that ever occured, to allow reproducable builds)

    versionCode = cmd("git", "rev-list", "--count", "HEAD")?.toIntOrNull() ?: 1
    versionName = cmd("git", "describe", "--always", "--tags", "HEAD") ?: "1.0.0"

Putting git infos into certain classes

    buildConfigField("String", "GIT_HEAD", "\"${cmd("git", "rev-parse", "HEAD") ?: ""}\"")
    buildConfigField("String", "FANCY_VERSION_NAME", "\"${fancyVersionName() ?: ""}\"")
    buildConfigField("long", "GIT_COMMIT_DATE", "${cmd("git", "show", "-s", "--format=%ct") ?: 0}L")

Using string interpolation to change the output file to include the version

    setProperty("archivesBaseName", "Quasseldroid-$versionName")

But the worst part is that often on StackOverflow you only find ugly hacks adding custom tasks, removing tasks, modifying them, etc with ugly hacks.

And even worse, sometimes there’s just no good alternative at all.

Which is why gradle took so long to clean up some parts of their API, or introduce parallel builds.