Part 3 of a series on optimizing Gradle builds in ephemeral CI environments focuses on the Execution phase and the Gradle Build Cache. It explains how the build cache stores task outputs (compiled classes, artifacts) keyed by inputs, enabling reuse across builds. Benchmarks on a Spring Boot project show restoring the local build cache saves ~11% build time. The post also covers remote build caches (self-hosted via Gradle Build Cache Node), artifact transforms cache, and JDK toolchain provisioning cache. It concludes the trilogy with a summary table of all optimizations across Startup, Configuration, and Execution phases, and recommends managed solutions like the setup-gradle GitHub Action or Develocity Universal Cache to avoid manual cache maintenance.
