A Version Catalog in Gradle is a centralized way to manage and reference dependency versions across multiple projects, reducing duplication and ensuring consistency in dependency management. It simplifies the process of updating dependencies by maintaining a single source of truth for versions.

Releasing version catalog.

Run release.sh script from master branch.

Publishing version catalog.

Publish version catalog locally.

./gradlew clean publishToMavenLocal

Publish version catalog to repository.

./gradlew clean publish

Global gradle properties.

To authenticate with Gradle to access repositories that require authentication, you can set your user and token in the gradle.properties file.

Here's how you can do it:

Open or create the gradle.properties file in your Gradle user home directory:
- On Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS), this directory is typically ~/.gradle/.
- On Windows, this directory is typically C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.gradle\.
Add the following lines to the gradle.properties file:
```
repository.user=your_user
repository.token=your_token_value
```
or use environment variables REPOSITORY_USER and REPOSITORY_TOKEN