There are many areas in Gradle where we want to do more with native code:
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Functional C++ plugin for more platforms. This is very important. Gradle is on its way to become an absolutely first class C++ build tool. We are not quite there yet but it has a high priority for us.
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A native client to make things faster. Even with a daemon there is client-jvm that needs to startup to communicate with the daemon. A native client would make Gradle even snappier. If you are triggering a Gradle build with STS you get a feel for how snappy this can be as there is no client-jvm that needs to start up. * Better terminal integration for more platforms (e.g. detect the terminal size and terminal resize). * Better native integration. Some stuff we are evaluating:
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UNIX file permissions for jvms < java 7
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daemon integration with service management
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detecting remote file systems (for caching).
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Make the daemon listen to file system changes (e.g. for IDE integration)
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Supporting prompting for user input and user passwords on java < 6 and in the daemon, where System.console is not supported.
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desktop notifications
To make all this a fully integral part of Gradle we would need to support Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. We would be extremely excited and grateful if organisations could provide us access to any of those the platforms. You may reply to the forums but are also more than welcome to contact me directly under hans.dockter at gradleware.com.
(sorry for the ugly formatting. We need to fix an issue with our markdown formatting in the forums)