One of the most important features in Gradle is the support for incremental tasks. Incremental tasks have input and output properties that can be checked by Gradle. When the values of the properties haven't changed, then the task can be marked as up to date by Gradle and it is not executed. This makes a build much faster. Input and output properties can be files, directories, or plain object values. We can set a task input property with a date or date/time value to define when a task is up to date for a specific period. As long as the value of the input property hasn't changed (and of course, also the other input and output property values), Gradle will not rerun task and mark it as up to date. This is useful, for example, if a long-running task (e.g. large integration test suite) only needs to run once a day or another period.

In the following example, in the Gradle build file, we define a new task Broadcast that will get content from a remote URL and save it in a file. In our case, we want to save the latest messages from SDKMAN!. If you don't know SKDMAN!, you should check it out!. The Broadcast task has an incremental task output property, which is the output file of the task:

// File: build.gradle

task downloadBroadcastLatest(type: Broadcast) {
    outputFile = file("${buildDir}/broadcast.latest.txt")
}

class Broadcast extends DefaultTask {

    // URL with latest announcements of SDKMAN!
    private static final String API = "https://api.sdkman.io/2/broadcast/latest"

    @OutputFile
    File outputFile

    @TaskAction
    void downloadLatest() {
        // Download text from URL and save in File.
        logger.lifecycle("Downloading latest broadcast message from SDKMAN!.")
        outputFile.text = API.toURL().text
    }

}

We can run the task downloadBroadcastLatest, and the contents of the URL are saved in the output file. When we run the task a second time, the task action is executed again and the contents of the URL are fetched again and saved in the output file.

$ gradle downloadBroadcastLatest --console plain
> Task :broadcastLatest
Downloading latest broadcast message from SDKMAN!.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 1s
1 actionable task: 1 executed
$ gradle downloadBroadcastLatest --console plain
> Task :broadcastLatest
Downloading latest broadcast message from SDKMAN!.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 1s
1 actionable task: 1 executed
$

Suppose we don't want to access the remote URL for each task invocation. One time every hour is enough to get the latest messages from SKDMAN!. Let's add a new incremental task input property with the value of the current hour to the task downloadBroadcastLatest.

// File: build.gradle
...
task downloadBroadcastLatest(type: Broadcast) {
    // Add incremental input property, with value that changes only
    // every hour. Gradle will mark the task as up-to-date for
    // every invocation as long as the hour value hasn't changed.
    // For example to set the value so that the task is only
    // execute once a day we could use java.time.LocalDate.now().
    inputs.property 'check_once_per_hour', java.time.LocalDateTime.now().hour

    outputFile = file("${buildDir}/broadcast.latest.txt")
}
...

$ gradle downloadBroadcastLatest --console plain
> Task :broadcastLatest
Downloading latest broadcast message from SDKMAN!.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 1s
1 actionable task: 1 executed
$ gradle downloadBroadcastLatest --console plain
> Task :broadcastLatest UP-TO-DATE

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 0s
1 actionable task: 1 up-to-date
$

Another option in our example is to add the incremental task input property to the source of our Broadcast task. We can do that because we have written the task class ourselves. If we cannot change the source of a task, the previous example is the way to add an incremental task input property to an existing task. The following code sample adds an input property to our task definition:

// File: build.gradle
...
class Broadcast extends DefaultTask {

    // URL with latest announcements of SDKMAN!
    private static final String API = "https://api.sdkman.io/2/broadcast/latest"

    @Input
    int checkOncePerHour = java.time.LocalDateTime.now().hour

    @OutputFile
    File outputFile

    @TaskAction
    void downloadLatest() {
        // Download text from URL and save in File.
        logger.lifecycle("Downloading latest broadcast message from SDKMAN!.")
        outputFile.text = API.toURL().text
    }

}
...

Finally, in order to make this work, it is important that a task have at least an increment task output property. If an existing task doesn't have one, we can add a outputs.upToDateWhen { true } to a task configuration, so Gradle recognizes the task as being incremental with output, and the output is always up to date. In the following example, we create a new task Show without an incremental task output property. In the task showBroadcastLatest, we define that the task has an always up-to-date output:

// File: build.gradle
...
task showBroadcastLatest(type: Show) {
    inputs.property 'check_once_a_day', java.time.LocalDate.now()

    // The original task definition has no increment task
    // output property, so we add one ourselves.
    outputs.upToDateWhen { true }

    inputFile = broadcastLatest.outputFile
}

class Show extends DefaultTask {

    @InputFile
    File inputFile

    @TaskAction
    void showContents() {
        println inputFile.text
    }

}
...

Written with Gradle 4.10.2.