Android build fails with "Gradle version 2.2 is required."

When building for Android under macOS, the kit as configured out of the box (Qt Creator 4.13.3) produces the build error:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

• Where:
  Build file '/Users/nic/Sources/Qt/linotune/build-linotune-Android_Qt_5_12_10_Clang_armeabi_v7a-Debug/android-build/build.gradle' line: 17

• What went wrong:
  A problem occurred evaluating root project 'android-build'.
  > Failed to apply plugin [id 'com.android.application']
  > Gradle version 2.2 is required. Current version is 4.6. If using the gradle wrapper, try editing the distributionUrl in /Users/nic/Sources/Qt/linotune/build-linotune-Android_Qt_5_12_10_Clang_armeabi_v7a-Debug/android-build/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties to gradle-2.2-all.zip

• Try:
  Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights.

The suggested workaround works, but having to manually edit this every time a build directory is (re)created is quite annoying.

If the build indeed depends on gradle version 2.2 specifically, why does the generated gradle-wrapper.properties reference the (presumably auto-detected) currently installed gradle version instead of the (apparently required) gradle-2.2-all.zip?

If conversely the build would work with newer gradle versions, why is there a strict check against version 2.2 still in there?

And finally: if a bug has been identified, and a specific fix for it has been identified, shouldn't the bug then simply be fixed? Whatever procedural or governance issue has resulted here in a developer sticking post-hoc patch instructions to the user into the code, instead of simply fixing the code itself? This baffles me.