November 2025
Table of Contents
New posts
- Unreasonable Configuration – Aurimas explores how mis-structured Gradle configuration in large builds leads to unreasonable build times, and proposes strategies to simplify and refactor the configuration model.
- Cache Cache No Cache – Aurimas provides a deep dive into Gradle’s caching ecosystem: why some builds benefit massively while others stall, and how to diagnose caching bottlenecks.
- Why Agentic AI Tools Struggle with Maven’s Lifecycle Model – Benedikt examines why modern AI agents falter when working with Maven’s lifecycles, and reflects on lessons that build tool designers (including Gradle) should learn.
- Gradle Debugging Techniques – Martin walks through practical debugging patterns for Gradle builds, from logging and tools to task graph inspection and performance tuning.
- Maven-Hijack: Software Supply Chain Attack Exploiting Packaging Order – This paper introduces Maven-Hijack, a supply chain attack that exploits dependency packaging order and JVM class resolution to silently override core application behavior by injecting an identically named malicious class.
- How to Win Friends and Influence Internal Visibility – Joe shares actionable strategies for increasing your visibility and impact inside engineering organizations, covering relationship-building, credibility, and communicating your work effectively.
New videos
- Speeding up inner dev loop with Gradle Configuration Cache – Alex and Mikhail @ droidcon Berlin give a practical look at how the Configuration Cache shrinks feedback loops for everyday development, with concrete examples of what you need to change (and avoid) in your build.
- Gradle: Your Build, Your Rules – Aurimas @ DPE Summit provides a tour of Gradle’s flexibility: custom logic, plugins, and build configuration patterns that let you shape the build to your team instead of the other way around.
- Faster Feedback Cut Gradle Build and Pipeline Times in Half – James @ droidcon Berlin gives a case-study-style session on how to tackle a slow pipeline by systematically cutting build and CI times—including ideas you can lift straight into your own setup.
New releases
- Dependency Analysis Gradle Plugin (DAGP) 3.3.0 - A new release of the popular plugin that analyzes project dependencies for issues like unused or misconfigured artifacts.
- Grolifant Library 5.5.1 - A general update to the underlying library used by many popular plugins.
- Webdriver Binaries Plugin 4.0.0 - The plugin has a new maintainer, is now compatible with Gradle 9 and Configuration Cache, and features breaking DSL changes.
- IaC Plugin 2.5.0 - A release updating support for Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform, OpenTofu, and TfDocs.
- Cloud CI Plugin 5.1.0 - A new minor release for the Cloud CI integration plugin.
- GradleTest Plugin 4.2.0 - A minor release for the plugin facilitating advanced Gradle testing scenarios.
From the Gradle team
Gradle 9.2.0 release
Gradle 9.2.0 brings several new features and improvements:
- Windows ARM support – Gradle can now run natively on Windows ARM devices
- Enhanced publishing API – New capabilities for defining and publishing custom software components
- Smarter error & warning reporting – Clearer suggestions (especially for dependency verification failures) and improved diagnostics
Help us grow the Gradle Best Practices
Engineers from Gradle, JetBrains, and Google have already helped us create one of our most popular resources: the Gradle Best Practices guide. But there’s so much more we can capture—such as patterns you rely on, tips that make your builds faster, and hard-won knowledge that deserves to be shared.
We’re opening this up to the community and would love your input.
Tell us what best practices you use, what’s missing, or what you want clarified.
New Training: Introduction to Gradle for Build Engineers
We’ve just launched a brand-new self-paced course on our learning platform, DPE University. This course is designed to help you unlock the full power of Gradle Build Tool. Whether you’re a Kotlin, Java, or multi-stack developer, this training takes you from basic build setups to performance enhancements and developer productivity wins.
The course will also soon be available on the Gradle YouTube channel. However if you want to take the course now on DPE University you can click on the link below.
Dependabot support for the Gradle Wrapper
Dependabot just added support for updating the Gradle Wrapper, making it easier to stay current with the latest Gradle releases. When enabled, Dependabot will open PRs that bump your wrapper version and update the checksum automatically—no scripts and no manual checks.
It currently works for standard wrapper layouts and is behind a feature flag, with full script updates coming later.
A small change with big convenience: effortless Gradle version hygiene!
From the Develocity team
Develocity IntelliJ Plugin 1.0.2 release
We’ve all seen AI dramatically accelerate development, but at the same time, introduce more complex failures. To ensure your troubleshooting speed can keep pace with the speed of AI code—so you can achieve fast and reliable software delivery—we’ve been working on the free Develocity plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.
Version 1.0.2 includes key performance improvements along with several UI enhancements. You can now control timeline and resource graph heights via a split pane, configure timeline refresh rates (10ms to 5s), and see visual confirmation in the UI when auto-scroll is active.
In a recent webinar, we demonstrated how to use the Develocity IntelliJ plugin alongside Develocity’s AI-powered troubleshooting features for rapidly resolving complex failures and performance issues—all from directly within the IDE.
If you missed it, don’t worry, you can watch the recording here!
Upcoming events
Meet the Gradle team and fellow community members at these upcoming events! We’d love to connect with you and discuss anything related to Gradle Build Tool, Develocity, or Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE).
- Dec 4-5, KCD Suisse Romande - One day focused on cloud native projects and the local community.
Next year’s event schedule coming soon!
Spread the word
We encourage you to share highlights from this newsletter—let’s support the authors and contributors!
You can always find this and previous editions in the Gradle Newsletter Archive or subscribe via RSS.
The Call for Proposals for the December edition is now open, and we’d love your contributions!
If you have some news you’d like us to share in the next issue,
let us know using the #community-news channel on the Gradle Community Slack or by mentioning @Gradle on Twitter/X.
Until next time!
— The Gradle Team
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