Gradle is an open source build automation system that is based on the Apache ANT and Maven concept. It introduces a Groovy-based Domain Specific Language (DSL) instead of the XML which is primarily used by Apache Maven for declaring the project configuration. Gradle was designed keeping in mind the support for multi-project builds which grow to be quite a large size, and it supports incremental builds. Gradle does this by understanding which parts of the build tree are up to date.
This ensures that tasks dependent on those parts will not be re-executed. Gradle determines which tasks need to be run and in which order, using Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG).
Gradle can automate the building, testing, publishing, deployment, ...
