Accelerate Your Android Development: Top Techniques to Reduce Gradle Build Time (Part I of II)
Article Summary
Rolgalan from Glovo cut Android build times by 75%—from 1 hour down to 15 minutes. Here's how they did it, and why most teams are leaving massive performance gains on the table.
This deep dive from Glovo's Mobile Platform team breaks down the most impactful Gradle optimization techniques that go beyond simple flag-flipping. While Gradle's documentation covers the basics, this article reveals the nuanced implementation details and architectural decisions that actually deliver results.
Key Takeaways
- Parallel execution alone saved 24 minutes per build (30 min serial to 6 min parallel)
- Remote cache cut CI build times in half after increasing storage from 10GB to 100GB
- Configuration Cache enables intra-module task parallelization, not just module-level parallelization
- Flattening module dependency graphs is critical: parallelization only works on independent modules
- Dynamic BuildConfig values and manifest properties silently kill cache effectiveness across builds
Critical Insight
Glovo reduced Android CI build times from 60 minutes to 15 minutes by properly implementing parallel tasks, remote caching with adequate storage, and eliminating dynamic build inputs that invalidate caches.
