The Gradle Daemon
A daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user.
Gradle runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and uses several supporting libraries with non-trivial initialization time. Startup can be slow. The Gradle Daemon solves this problem.
The Daemon is a long-lived background process that reduces the time it takes to run a build. The Daemon reduces build times by:
-
caching project information across builds
-
running in the background so every Gradle build doesn’t have to wait for JVM startup
-
benefiting from continuous runtime optimization in the JVM
-
watching the file system to calculate exactly what needs to be rebuilt before you run a build
Check Status
To get a list of running Daemons and their statuses, use the --status
command:
$ gradle --status
Sample output:
PID STATUS INFO
28486 IDLE 7.5
34247 BUSY 7.5
Currently, a given Gradle version can only connect to Daemons of the same version. This means the status output only shows Daemons spawned running the same version of Gradle as the current project.
Find all Daemons
If you have the Java Development Kit (JDK) installed, you can view live Daemons with the jps
command.
Live Daemons appear under the name GradleDaemon
. Because this command uses the JDK, you can view Daemons
running any version of Gradle.
Enable
Gradle enables the Daemon by default since Gradle 3.0. If your project doesn’t use the
Daemon, you can enable it for a single build with the --daemon
flag when you run a build:
$ gradle <task> --daemon
This flag overrides any settings that disable the Daemon in your project or user gradle.properties
files.
To enable the Daemon by default in older Gradle versions, add the following setting to the
gradle.properties
file in the project root or your Gradle user home:
org.gradle.daemon=true
Disable
You can disable the Daemon in multiple ways.
Disable for a Build
To disable the Daemon for a single build, pass the --no-daemon
flag when you run a build:
$ gradle <task> --no-daemon
This flag overrides any settings that enable the Daemon in your project or user gradle.properties
files.
Disable for a Project
To disable the Daemon for all builds of a project, add org.gradle.daemon=false
to
the gradle.properties
file in the project root.
Disable for a User
On Windows, this command disables the Daemon for the current user:
(if not exist "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle" mkdir "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle") && (echo. >> "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle/gradle.properties" && echo org.gradle.daemon=false >> "%USERPROFILE%/.gradle/gradle.properties")
On UNIX-like operating systems, the following Bash shell command disables the Daemon for the current user:
mkdir -p ~/.gradle && echo "org.gradle.daemon=false" >> ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
Disable Globally
There are two recommended ways to disable the Daemon globally across an environment:
-
add
org.gradle.daemon=false
to the$GRADLE_USER_HOME
/gradle.properties` file -
add the flag
-Dorg.gradle.daemon=false
to theGRADLE_OPTS
environment variable
Stop
It can be helpful to stop the Daemon when troubleshooting or debugging a failure. Daemons automatically stop given any of the following conditions:
-
available system memory is low
-
the Daemon has been idle for 3 hours
To stop running Daemon processes, use the following command:
$ gradle --stop
This terminates all Daemon processes started with the same version of Gradle used to execute the command.
You can also kill Daemons manually with your operating system. To find the PIDs for all Daemons regardless of Gradle version, see Find all Daemons.
Tools & IDEs
The Gradle Tooling API used by IDEs and other tools to integrate with Gradle always uses the Gradle Daemon to execute builds. If you execute Gradle builds from within your IDE, you already use the Gradle Daemon. There’s no need to enable it for your environment.
Continuous Integration
We recommend using the Daemon for both developer machines and Continuous Integration servers.
Compatibility
Gradle starts a new Daemon if no idle or compatible Daemons exist. The following values determine compatibility:
-
Requested build environment, including the following:
-
Java version
-
JVM attributes
-
JVM properties
-
-
Gradle version
Compatibility is based on exact matches of these values. For example:
-
If a Daemon is available with a Java 8 runtime, but the requested build environment calls for Java 10, then the Daemon is not compatible.
-
If a Daemon is available running Gradle 7.0, but the current build uses Gradle 7.4, then the Daemon is not compatible.
Certain properties of a Java runtime are immutable: they cannot be changed once the JVM has started. The following JVM system properties are immutable:
-
file.encoding
-
user.language
-
user.country
-
user.variant
-
java.io.tmpdir
-
javax.net.ssl.keyStore
-
javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword
-
javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType
-
javax.net.ssl.trustStore
-
javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword
-
javax.net.ssl.trustStoreType
-
com.sun.management.jmxremote
The following JVM attributes controlled by startup arguments are also immutable:
-
The maximum heap size (the
-Xmx
JVM argument) -
The minimum heap size (the
-Xms
JVM argument) -
The boot classpath (the
-Xbootclasspath
argument) -
The “assertion” status (the
-ea
argument)
If the requested build environment requirements for any of these properties and attributes differ from the Daemon’s JVM requirements, the Daemon is not compatible.
For more information about build environments, see the build environment documentation. |
Performance Impact
The Daemon can reduce build times by 15-75% when you build the same project repeatedly.
To get a sense of the Daemon’s impact on your builds, you can profile your build with --profile .
|
In between builds, the Daemon waits idly for the next build. As a result, your machine only loads Gradle into memory once for multiple builds, instead of once per build. This is a significant performance optimization. But that’s not where it stops.
Runtime Code Optimizations
The JVM gains significant performance from runtime code optimization: optimizations applied to code while it runs. JVM implementations like OpenJDK’s Hotspot progressively optimize code during execution. Subsequent builds can be faster purely due to this optimization process. Experiments with HotSpot show that it takes somewhere between 5 and 10 builds for optimization to stabilize. Thanks to the Daemon, perceived build times can drop dramatically between the first build and tenth builds of a project.
Memory Caching
The Daemon enables in-memory caching across builds. This includes classes for plugins and build scripts. Similarly, the Daemon maintains in-memory caches of build data such as the hashes of task inputs and outputs for incremental builds.
Performance Monitoring
Gradle actively monitors heap usage to detect memory leaks in the Daemon. When a memory leak exhausts available heap space, the Daemon:
-
Finishes the currently running build.
-
Restarts before running the next build.
Gradle enables this monitoring by default.
To disable this monitoring, set the org.gradle.daemon.performance.enable-monitoring
Daemon option to
false
. You can do this on the command line with the following command:
$ gradle <task> -Dorg.gradle.daemon.performance.enable-monitoring=false
Or configure the property in the gradle.properties
file in the project root or your Gradle project home:
org.gradle.daemon.performance.enable-monitoring=false
FAQ
Why is there more than one Daemon process on my machine?
Gradle starts a new Daemon process for your build if no idle Daemon exists with a compatible configuration. For more information about compability, see Compatibility.
How much memory does the Daemon use and can I give it more?
If the requested build environment does not specify a maximum heap size, the Daemon uses up to 512MB of heap. Daemons use the JVM’s default minimum heap size. 512MB is more than enough for most builds. Larger builds with hundreds of subprojects, lots of configuration, and source code may benefit from a larger heap size.
To increase the amount of memory the Daemon can use, specify the appropriate flags as part of the requested build environment. Please see the build environment documentation for details.
What can go wrong with the Daemon?
User build scripts and third party plugins can destabilize the Daemon through memory leaks, poor resource management, and global state corruption. Failing to close files after reading and writing is a common cause. The Microsoft Windows operating system frequently stops Daemon processes destabilized in this way.
Specify the --no-daemon
switch for a build to prevent use of the Daemon.
This can help determine if the Daemon is causing a problem with your build.