What does UP-TO-DATE in gradle indicate?

Question

I have recently started using gradle in a project and I am running the standard

gradle clean init build

I noticed that in many of the tasks that are running, I get this UP-TO-DATE message in the console, next to the current task that's running. eg:-

:foo:bar:test UP-TO-DATE

I am curious as to what does this message mean. Couldn't find any documentation around the same.

The question is already answered, but here's a trick that might be useful. If you want some task to run all the time (e.g. download updated data from a network endpoint), add `outputs.upToDateWhen { false }`. Instead of `false` you can have any custom code determines whether the outputs are up-to-date or not. — Gene Pavlovsky, Jan 19 '23 at 18:25

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 28 '13 at 23:11

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Everything that Gradle does is a task. Most tasks have inputs and outputs declared. Gradle will determine if a task is up to date by checking the inputs and outputs.

For example, your compile task input is the source code. If the source code hasn't changed since the last compile, then it will check the output to make sure you haven't blown away your class files generated by the compiler. If the input and output is unchanged, it considers the task "up to date" and doesn't execute that task. This can save a lot of time, especially on large builds.

answered Feb 28 '13 at 23:11

CaTalyst.X

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So if a tasks job was to test java classes (like the test task we get from java plugin), assuming that you have some failing tests, if you run the same task twice, will it not run at all if the test sources haven't changed? – Ankit Dhingra Mar 01 '13 at 04:20
Also, once I do a clean, doesn't it force all the tasks to restart? – Ankit Dhingra Mar 01 '13 at 04:43
@AnkitDhingra, A test task could behave like you said in your first comment, but that is not the behavior of the default test task. As for a "clean", running a clean just deletes the build directory, so clean will only force tasks to restart if they have inputs or outputs in the build directory. – CaTalyst.X Mar 05 '13 at 22:21

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 08 '13 at 18:30

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BTW: In case you really want to bypass this build optimization, you can use the --rerun-tasks command-line option to enforce execution of every task. see documentation of gradle command-line options

edited Jul 08 '13 at 18:30

Ian Durkan

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answered Mar 01 '13 at 11:51

roomsg

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score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 28 '13 at 13:58

Gradle is an incremental build system. This means that it checks that a task must really be executed before actually executing it, in order to be faster.

So, for example, if you already compiled your source files in a previous build, and didn't modify any source file (nor any other input of the compile task), then Gradle won't recompile all the source files, because it know it will lead to exactly the same output as the one already present in the build folder. And the compilation is thus safely skipped, leading to a faster build.

What does UP-TO-DATE in gradle indicate?

4 Answers4

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