Reducing Android Build Time at Scale
Article Summary
Patrick Brochado from BlaBlaCar turned a 13-minute Android build into a 4-minute one. His team was losing 8 hours of productivity every single day to slow builds.
BlaBlaCar's Android team tackled their painful build times using Gradle optimization and build analysis tools. Rather than waiting for a complete modularization rewrite, they focused on quick wins that could deliver immediate results with measured effort.
Key Takeaways
- Upgrading dependencies with incremental annotation processing saved 2 minutes per build
- Antivirus whitelisting delivered the biggest win: 5 minutes saved
- Configuration cache and file system watching cut another 90 seconds
- Proper api vs implementation keywords reduced build time by 30 seconds
Critical Insight
Five targeted optimizations reduced build time by 70% (from 13 to 4 minutes), saving the 12-person team 8 hours of productivity daily.
