title: Is gradle necessary for building Cordova apps
body: <p>Ever since I updated Cordova and it installed gradle I've not been able to build my android apps that were previously working. I've just noticed that I get an error when trying to run the apps in an android emulator (which previously worked) related to gradle</p>
  
  <pre><code>Waiting for emulator...  
  Booting up emulator (this may take a while).......................BOOT COMPLETE  
  Running: /home/lyndon/myapp/platforms/android/gradlew cdvBuildDebug -b /home/lyndon/myapp/platforms/android/build.gradle -PcdvBuildArch=arm -Dorg.gradle.daemon=true  
  Unzipping /home/lyndon/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-2.2.1-all/2m8005s69iu8v0oiejfej094b/gradle-2.2.1-all.zip to /home/lyndon/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-2.2.1-all/2m8005s69iu8v0oiejfej094b  
  Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException:   java.util.zip.ZipException: error in opening zip file
  at   org.gradle.wrapper.ExclusiveFileAccessManager.access(ExclusiveFileAccessManager.java:78)
  at org.gradle.wrapper.Install.createDist(Install.java:47)
  at org.gradle.wrapper.WrapperExecutor.execute(WrapperExecutor.java:129)
  at org.gradle.wrapper.GradleWrapperMain.main(GradleWrapperMain.java:48)
  Caused by: java.util.zip.ZipException: error in opening zip file
  at java.util.zip.ZipFile.open(Native Method)  
  at java.util.zip.ZipFile.&lt;init&gt;(ZipFile.java:220)  
  at java.util.zip.ZipFile.&lt;init&gt;(ZipFile.java:150)  
  at java.util.zip.ZipFile.&lt;init&gt;(ZipFile.java:164)  
  at org.gradle.wrapper.Install.unzip(Install.java:160)  
  at org.gradle.wrapper.Install.access$400(Install.java:29)  
  at org.gradle.wrapper.Install$1.call(Install.java:70)  
  at org.gradle.wrapper.Install$1.call(Install.java:47)  
  at org.gradle.wrapper.ExclusiveFileAccessManager.access(ExclusiveFileAccessManager.java:65)  
  ... 3 more  
  
  /home/lyndon/myapp/platforms/android/cordova/node_modules/q/q.js:126
                  throw e;  
                        ^  
  Error code 1 for command: /home/lyndon/myapp/platforms/android/gradlew with args: cdvBuildDebug,-b,/home/lyndon/myapp/platforms/android/build.gradle,-PcdvBuildArch=arm,-Dorg.gradle.daemon=true  
  Error: /home/lyndon/myapp/platforms/android/cordova/run: Command failed with exit code 1  
  at ChildProcess.whenDone   (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/cordova/node_modules/cordova-lib/src/cordova/superspawn.js:134:23)  
  at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:110:17)  
  at maybeClose (child_process.js:1015:16)  
  at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:1087:5)     
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is gradle necessary for building android app with cordova can I get rid of it or is there some other way of fixing this problem? thanks!</p>