Introduction

Welcome to the August 2023 Gradle Build Tool newsletter.

This edition covers recent content from the community and the latest news from the Gradle team, including Gradle Build Tool 8.3 and Gradle Enterprise 2023.2 releases.

From the Community

Blog Posts

• Gradle Cache: Your Build’s Best Friend - A look at various Gradle caching features (local build cache, remote build cache, configuration cache, etc.), including how they work and how you should use them.
• Around the World in 8 Remote Cache Nodes - Advice for globally distributed teams seeking to improve build times using well-located remote cache nodes.
• Supercharging Continuous Integration with Gradle - Engineers at Square discuss techniques they used to reduce build times on CI.
• A Glimpse of K2 in Nowinandroid - Analyzes the impact of Kotlin’s upcoming K2 compiler on build performance.
• How Apollo Kotlin Leverages Gradle Enterprise to Rev Up Build Times - The maintainers of Apollo Kotlin detail their integration with Gradle Enterprise and their use of Gradle’s build cache to reduce their build time in CI from 28 minutes to 4 minutes.

From the Gradle Team

Gradle Build Tool 8.3

Gradle 8.3 features significant performance improvements, including faster Java compilation with persistent compiler daemons and much lower memory consumption. There are also further improvements to the configuration cache, Kotlin DSL, and many other enhancements and bug fixes.

See the release notes for details.

Gradle Enterprise 2023.2

Gradle Enterprise 2023.2 brings greater observability and insights to Test Distribution usage for Gradle and Apache Maven™ builds, new Predictive Test Selection usage options for maximizing build time savings, build insights and build caching support for the Bazel build tool, and introductory integration for the sbt build tool.

See the release notes for details.

Dealing with Build Rot

Build Rot: The Hidden Technical Debt in Maven and Gradle Builds explores the impact of the silent degradation of your build system’s effectiveness and how to combat it.

Other Releases

Android Studio Giraffe

The stable version of Android Studio Giraffe has been released. Kotlin DSL is now the default choice for new builds in Android Studio. See our blog post for more details about this important change.

This release also brings other improvements to the build system:

• Experimental support for TOML-based version catalogs
• Download info during Gradle sync
• Automatic per-app language support
• The new Make Selected Modules build option

See the blog post for additional details.

Upcoming Trainings and Events with Gradle

DPE Summit 2023

In less than a month, DPE Summit 2023 will take place September 20-21 in San Francisco. DPE Summit is the only event fully dedicated to Developer Productivity Engineering and Developer Experience— developed and hosted by Gradle, and sponsored by JetBrains, Meta, Netflix, and Uber.

By attending, you’ll learn first-hand about the latest perspectives, practices, and tools from productivity and engineering leaders at the companies named above as well as Airbnb, Block, Google, LinkedIn, Slack, Spotify, and more.

Other Trainings and Events

September 5, Online Training: Introduction to Gradle Build Tool for Developers - EMEA

September 7, Online Training: Introduction to Gradle Build Tool for Build Engineers - EMEA

September 11-14, Industry Event: Scala Days - Madrid, Spain

September 12, Online Training: JVM Builds with Gradle Build Tool

September 13, Industry Event: Swamp Up - San Jose, California

September 13, Industry Event: DevOps World - New York, New York

September 14-15, Industry Event: Droidcon - New York, New York

September 18-19, Community Event: DevOpsDays - Atlanta, Georgia

September 20-21, Gradle-Hosted Event: DPE Summit - San Francisco, California

September 22-24, Industry Event: NFJS - Boston, Massachusetts

September 26, Online Training: Dependency Management

September 26-29, Community Event: Grace Hopper

September 27, Online Training: Advanced Dependency Management

September 27, Industry Event: DevOps World - Chicago, Illinois

September 28, Online Webcast: DPE: Next Big Thing in Software Development