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That error means you have something invalid within

application { ... }

. Unfortunately the error is not really telling what exactly. I strongly recommend to use the Kotlin DSL instead of the Groovy DSL. You immediately get type-safe build scripts, much better and more helpful error messages if you mess up the syntax like you did, and amazingly better IDE support if you use a proper IDE like IntelliJ. If you don't want to, comment out all content of

application { ... }

and comment it in line by line or block by block to find out where you messed up the syntax.

You say I mess up the syntax, but the error was in one of the files gradle itself made

What file are you referring to? Do you mean you use

init

and Gradle generated invalid files, or what do you mean exactly?