Use modern Java and Gradle for development (without affecting compatibility for CLI end-users)

[bartekpacia]

We want to:

• keep support for running Maestro on JDK8
• use latest JDK & Gradle during development

This is indeed possible to do. There are 2 great blogpost from Jake Wharton that explain how it can be accomplished:

• Gradle toolchains are rarely a good idea
• Build on latest Java, test through lowest Java
• this SO thread

Notes

• Using Java 21 requires bumping Gradle to a version that supports it. This in turn will require bumping Android Gradle Plugin to a version 8.x, which will require at least Java 17 for building. But it will have no impact on users of Maestro CLI.

Action items

• Create a convention plugin inside buildSrc and apply it to all projects that use the java plugin, to commonize setup in a single place.
• update GitHub Actions to compile on latest JDK 21 and Gradle 8.7
• update Gradle buildscripts to use Gradle toolchains to run tests on JDK 8, 11, 17 and 21

[bartekpacia]

These 2 dependencies might be problematic though, if their latest versions require JDK 17:

https://github.com/mobile-dev-inc/maestro/blob/dc1c0fa878b3cfde4dd3bf9de62c356c80f647cb/gradle/libs.versions.toml#L53-L54

EDIT

A quick look reveals that these deps might not be used at all? The only file where it's used (if I did it correctly):

https://github.com/mobile-dev-inc/maestro/blob/v1.36.0/maestro-client/src/main/java/maestro/android/AndroidExt.kt