Gradle functions based on Apache Ant and Apache Maven.  It deploys Groovy-based domain-specific language for project configuration. It makes use of a Directed acyclic graph, also called as DAG, for determining the order of the tasks to run. It is designed by larger builds and can support incremental builds. It does that by predicting the upto date parts of the build tree, hence any task that is dependent on those parts are not re-executed.