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`buildscript`, `initscript`, `plugins`, and `pluginManagement` are all special blocks that extracted and run separately, before any other part of the script. this is necessary because Gradle needs to use them to set up the build environment for the rest of the script. you cannot use anything defined outside of the block, in these blocks.

How then can I define a method within the initscript?

you cannot share anything between the special blocks as they run in a separate context

i'm talking about within the initscript alone

something like

```
initscript{
    def hi() {
        println "hi"
    }
    hi()
    hi()
}```
does not work

i get the following error:

```
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Initialization script '/Users/aloneitan/.gradle/init.gradle' line: 1

* What went wrong:
Could not compile initialization script '/Users/aloneitan/.gradle/init.gradle'.
&gt; startup failed:
  initialization script '/Users/aloneitan/.gradle/init.gradle': 1: Unexpected input: '{' @ line 1, column 11.
     initscript{
               ^
  
  1 error```


I don't need to share a single method between, say `initscript` and `plugins` .

just keep it within `initiscript`

try adding a space? I'm not sure, might be a quirk of the Groovy DSL (seems to work fine for me in Kotlin)

```FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Initialization script '/Users/aloneitan/.gradle/init.gradle' line: 2

* What went wrong:
Could not compile initialization script '/Users/aloneitan/.gradle/init.gradle'.
&gt; startup failed:
  initialization script '/Users/aloneitan/.gradle/init.gradle': 2: Method definition not expected here. Please define the method at an appropriate place or perhaps try using a block/Closure instead. at line: 2 column: 5. File: _BuildScript_ @ line 2, column 5.
         def hi() {
         ^
  
  1 error```


Gradle's pre-parsing is a bit of a heuristic and you shouldn't do anything out of the ordinary