I don’t get the hate for gradle. Sure, one can make some monstrosities with it, but the common case is pretty much just listing your deps, not different to, say cargo.

Yet, when you inevitably have to add something more complex, it will let you do it. Gradle is perhaps one of the most misunderstood technologies, many people believe it is some imperative ant-script, when in fact you have the script write a declarative plan for you, which will be later executed “purely” (much more so than maven for example)