Pretty much every golang project I've ever touched builds with `go build`. Most that have makefiles just call `go build`, and the makefile is more for building docker containers, or doing infra-related things. If a project is in go, 98% of the time `git clone XXX && cd XXX && go build` will work.
That is absolutely not the case with C, C++, Java, python.
> So gradle's issue, not Java's. See above.
The issue exists with maven too, but _not_ with go build, which is OP's point.