Add gradle-versions-plugin for dependency update tracking

[avazirna]

Product Description

No visible user-facing changes.

Technical Summary

Adds the ben-manes gradle-versions-plugin (v0.53.0) to enable automated dependency version checking.

This allows running ./gradlew dependencyUpdates -DoutputFormatter=json to generate a JSON report of all project dependencies and their available updates, which is used by the internal dependency tracking skill to keep our dependency spreadsheet up to date.

Changes:

• Added com.github.ben-manes:gradle-versions-plugin:0.53.0 classpath to root build.gradle
• Applied com.github.ben-manes.versions plugin in app/build.gradle

Safety Assurance

Safety story

This is a build-tooling-only change. The plugin runs as a standalone Gradle task and has no effect on the compiled application, runtime behavior, or build outputs. It only adds a new task (dependencyUpdates) to the Gradle task graph.

Automated test coverage

No new tests needed — this is a build tool addition with no impact on application code.

QA Plan

• Verify ./gradlew assembleCommcareDebug still succeeds
• Verify ./gradlew dependencyUpdates -DoutputFormatter=json produces a valid report at app/build/dependencyUpdates/report.json

Labels and Review

• Do we need to enhance the manual QA test coverage ? If yes, RELEASES.md is updated accordingly
• Does the PR introduce any major changes worth communicating ? If yes, RELEASES.md is updated accordingly
• Risk label is set correctly
• The set of people pinged as reviewers is appropriate for the level of risk of the change

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Repository UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: e00f9114-3f2d-4c63-9ede-dbc54409c208

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between a251ad0 and 87f9ef2.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• app/build.gradle
• build.gradle

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The pull request adds the com.github.ben-manes.versions Gradle plugin to the build configuration. The plugin classpath dependency (com.github.ben-manes:gradle-versions-plugin:0.53.0) is added to the root build.gradle buildscript dependencies, and the plugin is applied in the app/build.gradle file.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~2 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately summarizes the main change: adding the gradle-versions-plugin for dependency update tracking, which matches the primary purpose of the changeset.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description comprehensively covers all required template sections with clear explanations of technical changes, safety rationale, QA plans, and includes the reviewer checklist items.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch add-gradle-versions-plugin

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