Implicit conversions

[eskatos]

Some Gradle DSL properties would benefit from implicit type safe conversions.

For example, to define a maven repository one has to:

repositories {
  maven { url = uri("...") }
}

The call to project.uri('...') converts a String to an URI.

With implicit conversions one could simply write:

repositories {
  maven { url = "..." }
}

One possible way to achieve this could be with implicit conversion compiler plugins, see #256 (comment). This would provide complete parity with Groovy with the advantage of compile time checking.

[JLLeitschuh]

As it stands right now, this works right now:

repositories {
  maven { setUrl("...") }
}

I'm not a fan of this either

[eskatos]

Also see #380 (KT-4075)

[sdeleuze]

I am not sure I like the idea of introducing implicit conversions to Kotlin ... It can be useful but also confusing, Kotlin statically type nature is a key point, that's maybe too much magic for my taste.