Gradle Remote Build Cache Optimization
Article Summary
Nelson Osacky from SoundCloud reveals how simply turning on Gradle's remote build cache got them almost zero cache hits. The real work was hunting down why.
SoundCloud's Android team faced a critical problem: build times were slowing down development. They had remote build caching enabled, but weren't seeing the benefits. This deep dive shows how they debugged cache misses using Gradle Enterprise to compare builds and identify why tasks weren't reusing cached outputs.
Key Takeaways
- BuildConfig values differed between CI and local (TEST_RETRY_COUNT was 0 vs 1)
- Disabled incremental compilation on CI broke all Kotlin compile task caching
- Gradle Enterprise build scans compare task inputs across different environments
- Moving environment checks from build time to runtime fixed cache misses
Critical Insight
Enabling remote build cache is just step one: you need to ensure task inputs match across environments or you'll get zero cache hits.
