Android gradle project builds very slowly

Question

We have changed our Android app project to use gradle, but have noticed it is building significantly slower.

Before with ANT:
6 sek / 50 sec (with clean)

After with gradle:
30 sek / 80 sec (with clean)

I have profiled the solution with:

gradle assembleDebug --profile

The main tasks in the resulting report was thies tasks: (in the build without clean)

:packageDebug   10.690s     
:processDebugResources  8.795s  
:compileDebugJava   7.644s

I don't have any ideas about getting more details information about thies tasks.

Is this normal? How could this be improved?
I know the new build system is still in betas, but it seems like others are building much faster.

I have looked around without finding a solution I have tried several things including making sure gradle deamon is enabled with a gradle.properties file containing this:

org.gradle.daemon=true
org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xms128m -Xmx256m
org.gradle.parallel=true

build.gradle:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        maven { url 'http://download.crashlytics.com/maven' }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.7.+'
        classpath 'com.google.guava:guava:14.0.1'
        classpath 'com.crashlytics.tools.gradle:crashlytics-gradle:1.+'
        classpath 'me.tatarka:gradle-retrolambda:1.1.1'
        classpath 'com.neenbedankt.gradle.plugins:android-apt:1.2'
    }
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven { url 'http://download.crashlytics.com/maven' }
}

apply plugin: 'android'
apply plugin: 'crashlytics'
apply plugin: 'retrolambda'
apply plugin: 'android-apt'

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: '*.jar')
    compile 'com.google.guava:guava:14.0.1'
    compile 'com.crashlytics.android:crashlytics:1.+'
    apt "org.androidannotations:androidannotations:3.0.1"
    compile "org.androidannotations:androidannotations-api:3.0.1"
}

apt {
    arguments {
        resourcePackageName "com.example"
        androidManifestFile variant.processResources.manifestFile
    }
}

android {
    packagingOptions { //Fix: http://stackoverflow.com/a/20675331/860488
        exclude 'META-INF/DEPENDENCIES'
        exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
        exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE'
    }

    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }

    compileSdkVersion 10
    buildToolsVersion "18.0.1"

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 7
        targetSdkVersion 10
        buildConfigField "boolean", "useProductionServices", "true"
    }

    buildTypes {
        testflight.initWith(buildTypes.debug)
        debug {
            packageNameSuffix ".debug"
            buildConfigField "boolean", "useProductionServices", "false"
        }

        testflight {
            packageNameSuffix ".testflight"
            buildConfigField "boolean", "useProductionServices", "true"
        }

        release {
            buildConfigField "boolean", "useProductionServices", "true"
        }
    }
}

retrolambda {
    compile "net.orfjackal.retrolambda:retrolambda:1.1.2"
    jdk System.getenv("JAVA8_HOME")
}

Did you find a workaround for this? Gradle is soooo sloooowww. I did not find this helpful - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16775197/building-and-running-app-via-gradle-and-android-studio-is-slower-than-via-eclips — Mark Lapasa, Jan 26 '15 at 01:13

Morten Holmgaard · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-02T06:56:22.873

3

Adding a gradle.properties file with this content helps a bit:

org.gradle.daemon=true
org.gradle.parallel=true
org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx256m

Source: https://medium.com/@erikhellman/boosting-the-performance-for-gradle-in-your-android-projects-6d5f9e4580b6

EDIT:
I have just read this blogpost which has 6 tips to improve gradle build speed:
6 tips to speed up your Gradle build

edited May 02 '16 at 06:56

answered Feb 11 '16 at 07:21

Morten Holmgaard

7,484
8
63
85

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 11 '16 at 12:55

3

I have same issue and solved by this setting :

File -> Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Build Tools -> Gradle -> Offline work

after this setting reduce time by 3 minute to 2s728ms

answered Feb 11 '16 at 12:55

Dhaval Jivani

9,467
2
48
42

Kartihkraj Duraisamy · Answer 3 · 2016-02-11T12:36:58.563

**** Talking about new version of AS in old question thread may look weird.But I feel it may help someone else, who looks for an answer****

AndroidStudio 2.0 Will probably help you out to improve the build process.

The following things will play major role in improving the build process with 2.0

Instant Run - You need to enable it in the Settings. File-Settings-Instant Run. Then enable it
AS 2.0 Actually includes the app restart option to improve the deployment.
If you have modules in your project. 2.0 will do pre-dexing it and keep it to build. Until we have any changes in the module, it does not require to re-dex and it dex'es only the modify piece to run on the device/emulator. Seriously, that saves lot of time. Do module based business.
Progaurd optimization and obfuscation tasks also plays a role in slowing down the building process. Do the following to stop optimizing and obfuscating with progaurd while you wants only debug mode.

android {
   buildTypes {
     debug {
       minifyEnabled true
       useProgaurd false
     } 
     release {
       minifyEnabled true
       useProgaurd true
     }
   }
}

After at all AS 2.0 with the default settings itself help you to improve the building performance.

One more tips every developer would suggest commonly is make the Gradle plugin offline mode enabled if you do not added any new library dependencies for particular build process.

Android gradle project builds very slowly

3 Answers3