Request: cut a maintenance release of the 3.x branch (Groovy 5 support + buildability)

[royteeuwen]

Summary

Please consider cutting a maintenance release from the 3.x line (main-v3).
The last published 3.x tag is 3.0.2; main-v3 sits at an unreleased 3.0.3.
There is currently no released 3.x artifact that (a) builds from source today, or
(b) runs on Groovy 5.

Why 3.x still matters

4.x is a full rewrite (Gradle → Maven) that dropped the moco and wiremock
modules. Teams that depend on the moco/wiremock stub servers have no upgrade
path to 4.x, so the 3.x line is still their only option.

Problems on the current 3.x

1. It no longer builds. buildSrc depends on com.neva.gradle:fork-plugin,
   whose transitive com.neva.commons:gitignore-file-filter:1.0.0 was only ever
   published to JCenter/Bintray (shut down 2021). It is absent from Maven Central
   and the Gradle Plugin Portal, and 7.0.11 is the latest fork-plugin release, so
   there's no version to move to. ./gradlew fails at
   :buildSrc:pluginUnderTestMetadata before any project code compiles.

2. It doesn't run on Groovy 5. The bundles compile against Groovy 4 and let
   bnd derive Import-Package: groovy.*;version="[4.0,5)". On a Groovy 5 runtime
   the mandatory groovy import in the core bundle falls outside that range, so
   core stays Installed/unresolved and AEM Stubs is dead:

   ERROR: groovy.lang,version=[4.0,5) -- Cannot be resolved
   

   (Groovy 4 works; Groovy 5 breaks. The Groovy runtime is, for example, supplied
   by aem-groovy-console, which I'd like to update to Groovy 5 as well.)

Request

Cut a 3.x maintenance release that at minimum:

• restores buildability (resolve/replace the dead fork-plugin dependency), and
• widens the Groovy import range so the bundles resolve on Groovy 4, 5 (and 6).

Offer

I have these fixes prepared and validated against Groovy 4.0.32, 5.0.6
and a 6.0.0-alpha-1 runtime — core+moco resolve and all sample stubs return
200 on all three. I will open PRs against main-v3:

1. Groovy 4/5/6 support + build fix — widen the groovy import range to [4,7)
   in core/moco/wiremock; drop the dead JCenter-only fork-plugin.
2. (Optional follow-up) Upgrade embedded moco 1.1.0 → 1.6.1 (newer
   Netty/Guava/Freemarker) plus OSGi-wiring hardening so the moco server can't
   silently fail to start. Backward-compatible for existing .json/.groovy
   stubs (only edge case: xml() changed from a request-matcher to a
   content-resource).