Gradle build failure

What this failure means

Gradle exited with a non-zero status, indicating one or more tasks failed. The FAILURE: block in the output identifies the first task that failed and the root cause.

Symptoms

Faultline looks for one or more of these log fragments:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception
What went wrong:
Could not resolve
Could not download
Execution failed for task
Gradle build daemon
Could not GET
compileSdkVersion

Diagnosis

Gradle exited with a non-zero status, indicating one or more tasks failed. The FAILURE: block in the output identifies the first task that failed and the root cause.

Fix steps

1. Read the What went wrong: block. It usually contains the direct cause and file location.
2. For Could not resolve: check the repository URL and any private repo credentials.
3. For Execution failed for task ':compileJava': fix the Java or Kotlin compilation errors listed below.
4. Run ./gradlew <task> --stacktrace locally for the full exception chain.
5. For daemon issues, run ./gradlew --no-daemon once to rule out cached state.

Validation

• ./gradlew build --stacktrace completes successfully.
• The CI build step exits zero without repeating the original FAILURE: block.

Why it matters

Gradle failures can stem from dependency resolution errors, Android SDK drift, wrapper incompatibility, or a failing compile/test task. Because Gradle is often the outer build orchestrator, the first failure block is the shortest path to the real root cause.

Prevention

• Cache ~/.gradle/caches between CI runs to avoid repeated dependency downloads.
• Pin the Gradle wrapper version in gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties.
• Enable --build-cache in CI to reuse task outputs across runs.

Try it locally

./gradlew build --stacktrace
./gradlew build --stacktrace

How Faultline detects it

Use faultline explain gradle-build to see the full playbook.

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain gradle-build

Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/build/gradle-build.yaml. Do not edit directly.