# Essential Tips for Gradle on Ephemeral CI Environments - Part 1

DevFeed: [Essential Tips for Gradle on Ephemeral CI Environments - Part 1](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/essential-tips-for-gradle-on-ephemeral-ci-environments-part-1-24631.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.gradle.org/gradle-on-ephemeral-ci-1>)

Author: Louis Jacomet

Published: 2026-07-07T04:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [The Gradle Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-gradle-blog.md>)

Topics: [Gradle](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/gradle.md>), [ci](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ci.md>), [Caching](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/caching.md>), [Optimization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/optimization.md>), [GitHub Actions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/github-actions.md>), [Docker](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/docker.md>), [Spring Boot](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/spring-boot.md>)

Tags: [cache](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cache.md>), [caching](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/caching.md>), [ci](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ci.md>), [docker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/docker.md>), [efficiency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/efficiency.md>), [github](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github.md>), [github-actions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github-actions.md>), [gradle](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gradle.md>), [optimization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/optimization.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains how to optimize Gradle builds in ephemeral CI environments, where short-lived containers and cloud-based build agents eliminate persistent state. It compares common Gradle optimizations, discusses caching and workflow adaptations, and describes benchmarking on a small Spring Boot project in a Docker-based environment.

## Source excerpt

Ephemeral CI replaces long-lived, stateful build agents with short-lived, disposable environments, typically powered by containers and cloud services like GitHub Actions or Docker, to ensure isolated, reliable, and repeatable builds. While this approach improves consistency, security, and scalability, it also eliminates persistent state, requiring new strategies for caching and setup efficiency. This post covers practical strategies to overcome those limitations and keep Gradle fast. With the right optimizations, Gradle's flexibility and tooling support ephemeral workflows well. Common Gradle Optimizations While numerous Gradle optimizations are widely recommended and beneficial in traditional CI, their effectiveness in ephemeral CI environments varies significantly. Many common optimizations rely on persistence and statefulness, making them less effective or more complex to maintain in ephemeral contexts. Here's a closer look at how these popular Gradle optimizations perform in ephemeral CI: # Optimization for Local or Traditional CI Builds Effective in Ephemeral CI? Reason 1 Enable the Build Cache ✅ Highly effective when remote caching is leveraged; local caching alone has limited utility 2 Tailor workflows (task avoidance) ✅ Helpful but requires careful planning and continuous adjustments 3 Increase Gradle's heap size ✅ Immediate benefits without significant setup overhead 4 Enable parallel execution ✅ Efficiently uses cloud resources 5 Optimize the configuration phase (lazy APIs, applying plugins selectively, etc.) ✅ Effective but requires rigorous management of configuration logic 6 Optimize dependency resolution (declarative syntax, remove dynamic versions, etc.) ✅ Helpful, though gains are often marginal in ephemeral CI 7 Re-use the Dependency Cache 🔷 Manual reuse is fiddly; the free setup-gradle action provides it on GitHub Actions, and Develocity's Artifact Cache provides it on any CI 8 Enable the Configuration Cache ✅ Increasingly enabled by default in mod