An In-depth Look at Gradle's Approach to Faster Compilation

Gradle avoids recompilation by analyzing compile classpaths directly to detect ABI changes, rather than generating header JARs like Bazel does. This approach skips the expensive disk I/O of creating and packaging partial class files, and also enables finer-grained incremental compilation by knowing exactly which classes changed. Benchmarks on a synthetic 1000-project Java build show Gradle is significantly faster than Bazel for ABI-change scenarios. Additional optimizations in Gradle 8.1 (stable Configuration Cache) and 8.3 (persistent compiler daemons enabled by default) further improve build times for both ABI and non-ABI change scenarios.