Gradle Daemon Support for Faster Build Compilation
Article Summary
Andrey Breslav from JetBrains tackles one of mobile development's biggest pain points: slow build times that kill developer productivity.
JetBrains released Kotlin 0.12.1230 with Gradle Daemon support to eliminate compilation startup costs. The core problem? Class loading and JVM warmup were adding significant overhead to every build, slowing down development cycles.
Key Takeaways
- Gradle Daemon keeps compiler loaded in memory, eliminating class loading overhead
- Full speedups appear after a few runs as JIT warmup completes
- Works reliably with Gradle 2.4+ and enabled by default in Android Studio
- Reusing the same compiler instance dramatically reduces compilation times
Critical Insight
By leveraging Gradle's long-running daemon process, Kotlin builds skip expensive startup costs and compile significantly faster after initial warmup.
