enable build configuration caching support

[nextdayy]

the aim of this PR is to enable build configuration caching into the preprocessor. this substantially improves gradle build times.

• gradle bumped with gradle wrapper --gradle-version=8.7 (for build caching)
• reformatted with IntelliJ IDEA linter
• fixed all deprecations according to the documentation
• replaced all references to project with their equivalents, according to the documentation (see here) so that build configuration caching works. I am 80% sure this is the only limitation to configuration caching not working, but I wasn't sure how to fully test this
• all tests still pass

here is a screenshot of a project which shows the issues, which should be resolved by this PR, which arise from using the preprocessor with build configuration caching enabled.