Yeah, for normal dependencies that's true. But on Android you quickly get some additional things that have to be handled by the build system:
* Code generation from annotations (reflection on Android is slow, so doing code generation is way better)
* Attaching native .so libraries in proper directories of APK (Maven plugin does that automatically, Gradle needed writing code for that to work)
* Properly handling RenderScript backwards compatibility library (there was no Gradle support for that at all)
* Testing - Robolectric is still not supported which throws a wrench into whole Jenkins/TeamCity autotest stack and needs fiddling with emulators
* Code generation from annotations (reflection on Android is slow, so doing code generation is way better) * Attaching native .so libraries in proper directories of APK (Maven plugin does that automatically, Gradle needed writing code for that to work) * Properly handling RenderScript backwards compatibility library (there was no Gradle support for that at all)
* Testing - Robolectric is still not supported which throws a wrench into whole Jenkins/TeamCity autotest stack and needs fiddling with emulators