remove gradle (#2584)

* remove gradle

* update changelog

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -21,6 +21,13 @@ but cannot always guarantee backwards compatibility. Changes that may **break co
 
 ### For developers of the library:
 
+**Improved**
+- Improvements to CI/CD: [#2584](https://github.com/unit8co/darts/pull/2584) by [Dennis Bader](https://github.com/dennisbader).
+  - updated all workflows with most recent action versions
+  - improved caching across `master` branch and its children
+  - fixed failing docker deployment
+  - removed `gradle` dependency in favor of native GitHub action plugins.
+
 ## [0.31.0](https://github.com/unit8co/darts/tree/0.31.0) (2024-10-13)
 
 ### For users of the library:

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -48,19 +48,28 @@ and discuss it with some of the core team.
         * `refactor/`
         * …
     * Work on your update
-7. Check that your code passes all the tests and design new unit tests if needed: `./gradlew test_all`.
-8. Verify your tests coverage by running `./gradlew coverageTest`
-    * Additionally you can generate an xml report and use VSCode Coverage gutter to identify untested
-    lines with `./coverage.sh xml`
-9. If your contribution introduces a non-negligible change, add it to `CHANGELOG.md` under the "Unreleased" section.
+7. Check that your code passes all the tests and design new unit tests if needed: `pytest`.
+8. If your contribution introduces a non-negligible change, add it to `CHANGELOG.md` under the "Unreleased" section.
    You can already refer to the pull request. In addition, for tracking contributions we are happy if you provide
    your full name (if you want to) and link to your Github handle. Example:
    ```
    - Added new feature XYZ. [#001](https://https://github.com/unit8co/darts/pull/001)
      by [<Your Name>](https://github.com/<your-handle>).
    ```
-10. Create a pull request from your new branch into the **master** branch.
+9. Create a pull request from your new branch into the **master** branch.
+10. `Codecov` will add a test coverage report in the pull request. Make sure your test cover all changed lines.
 
+### Build the Documentation Locally
+
+You can build the documentation locally using `make`:
+
+```bash
+# make sure your latest changes are installed
+pip install .
+# build the docs
+make --directory=./docs build-all-docs
+```
+After that docs will be available in `./docs/build/html` directory. You can just open `./docs/build/html/index.html` using your favourite browser.
 
 ### Code Formatting and Linting
 
@@ -80,4 +89,4 @@ Please follow the procedure described in [INSTALL.md](https://github.com/unit8co
 to set up a x_64 emulated environment. For the development environment, instead of installing Darts with
 `pip install darts`, instead go to the darts cloned repo location and install the packages with: `pip install -r requirements/dev-all.txt`.
 If necessary, follow the same steps to setup libomp for lightgbm.
-Finally, verify your overall environment setup by successfully running all unitTests with gradlew or pytest.
+Finally, verify your overall environment setup by successfully running all unitTests with `pytest`.

INSTALL.md

@@ -73,30 +73,3 @@ jupyter lab --ip 0.0.0.0 --no-browser --allow-root
 ```
 
 Then copy and paste the URL provided by the docker container into your browser to access Jupyter notebook.
-
-
-## Tests
-
-The gradle setup works best when used in a python environment, but the only requirement is to have `pip` installed for Python 3+
-
-To run all tests at once just run
-```bash
-./gradlew test_all
-```
-
-alternatively you can run
-```bash
-./gradlew unitTest_all # to run only unittests
-./gradlew coverageTest # to run coverage
-./gradlew lint         # to run linter
-```
-
-To run the tests for specific flavours of the library, replace `_all` with `_core`, `_prophet`, `_pmdarima` or `_torch`.
-
-## Documentation
-
-To build documentation locally just run
-```bash
-./gradlew buildDocs
-```
-After that docs will be available in `./docs/build/html` directory. You can just open `./docs/build/html/index.html` using your favourite browser.