Provide a settings plugin or version catalog for managing Gradle plugin versions

[wilkinsona]

When using Gradle, it's difficult to keep the version of a build plugin such as org.hibernate.orm or org.graalvm.buildtools.native up-to-date and/or aligned with other dependencies from the same project. We could make this easier by offering some "plugin management" for Gradle builds. This could be delivered either in the form of a settings plugin or a published version catalog.

[xenoterracide]

I'm willing to look into this, I'm about to put my own massive copy-pasta of spring names into a convention catalog.

What I'd need from you in order to achieve this for you is a couple of things.

1. I assume that the versions in the reference appendix are generated somehow. Can you point me to that? it'll give a good starting place.
2. My choice for publishing was not going to include any kind of versions so that I still use the platform bom, do you expect otherwise?

• I might suggest looking into having 2 catalogs if you expect otherwise. I forget the term, but the version catalog doesn't include the metadata to ensure that versions of stuff is locked together (maven doesn't either, but I digress), maybe the better question is, do you expect this to be an alternative to the bom?

[wilkinsona]

Reading between the lines a bit, it sounds like #29588 may be a better fit than this issue. Some design work's needed before we'll be ready to consider a contribution and, unfortunately, we have other higher priorities at the moment.

This issue is specifically about managing the versions of Gradle plugins and we haven't yet decided if that should be done using a settings plugin or version catalog (I'll update the labels to reflect the need for that design work). Whichever we eventually choose, the management of versions is the key part of it.