Gradle 9.7.0 promotes Isolated Projects from experimental to incubating status. The feature enforces isolation boundaries between projects in a multi-project build, enabling parallel project configuration. This delivers measurable IDE sync and CLI speedups: Gradle's own 300-subproject build saw IDE sync drop from 84s to 47s (~1.8×), a 2,500-project Java monorepo saw build-script recompilation go from 10m53s to 2m59s (~3.6×), and a 5,000-project Android monorepo saw Studio sync drop from 5m09s to 2m44s (~1.9×). The feature requires Configuration Cache as a prerequisite and can be enabled via `org.gradle.isolated-projects=true` in gradle.properties. Task graph discovery across projects remains sequential in 9.7.0, limiting CLI gains relative to IDE sync. Future work includes skipping configuration of uninvolved projects and finer-grained configuration caching. It is not yet recommended for building production artifacts.
Table of contents
Table of ContentsIntroductionAdopting Isolated Projects #Performance benefits #Current limitations #Looking ahead #DiscussQuestions this post answers
How do I enable Isolated Projects in Gradle?
Set `org.gradle.isolated-projects=true` in your `gradle.properties` file, or pass `--isolated-projects` on the command line. The property form is required for IDE sync to benefit. Configuration Cache must already be enabled, as it is a prerequisite. When enabled, Gradle fails immediately on the first isolation constraint violation; use Diagnostics mode to surface multiple violations at once. Teams migrating large Gradle builds track compatibility and plugin support news on daily.dev.
What performance improvements does Gradle Isolated Projects give for large multi-project builds?
Results vary by build structure and parallelism. Gradle's own 300-subproject build saw IDE sync drop from 84s to 47s (~1.8×). A 2,500-project Java monorepo saw build-script recompilation fall from 10m53s to 2m59s (~3.6×) at parallelism 6. A 5,000-project Android monorepo at parallelism 32 saw Android Studio sync drop from 5m09s to 2m44s (~1.9×). AndroidX (1,000+ projects, parallelism 96) saw sync drop from 4m00s to 2m47s (~1.4×). Engineers benchmarking Gradle upgrades across large monorepos share real-world numbers on daily.dev.
What are the current limitations of Gradle Isolated Projects in 9.7.0?
Task graph discovery across projects remains sequential in Gradle 9.7.0. Projects are configured in parallel and task registration proceeds concurrently, but resolving relationships between tasks across all projects is still single-threaded. This means CLI invocation speedups are currently less impressive than IDE sync gains. The feature is incubating and not recommended for building production artifacts; more isolation constraints may be added in future minor releases. Developers deciding whether to adopt Isolated Projects in production pipelines follow Gradle release notes on daily.dev.