Would be exciting if you can get to 5, would be interested to hear
updates as/if you progress.
On 9/22/26 16:21, Emmanuel Bourg wrote:
Hi all,
So it seems AI solved Navier-Stokes, but can it crack our own
Millennium Problem, worth a million thanks: upgrading the Gradle package.
I started using Claude a few days ago for routine packaging work and
taught him the basics. He did wonders and quickly handled non-trivial
upgrades involving patch conflicts or API incompatibilities, for which
he wrote patches on his own. And then I threw him at gradle, with the
modest goal of breaking the 4.4.1 barrier. 40 minutes later I had a
working gradle/4.5.1 package ready to be tested.
The Kotlin DSL still doesn't work, so it remains a very modest step.
But it's the first progress after years of frustration. I'll upload
gradle/4.5.1 as soon as I'm done checking the compatibility, and then
I'll see how far he can go. Gradle 4.6 is in sight, and I hope to
climb up to 5.5 to reach the version compatible with Kotlin 1.3.31. At
this point, if the Kotlin DSL works, the road to a "normal" upgrade
process could be cleared.
I suspected Claude would be good at handling simple package upgrades,
but the result exceeded my expectations. That's a game changer for
packaging work. I'm preparing a Claude skill for maintaining Java
packages if anyone wants to give it a try.
Emmanuel Bourg
