The Gradle Java plugin extends the Base plugin and provides the tasks needed to build a Java (or Kotlin) project. They resemble the Maven build phases for those familiar with Maven. See also Migrating Builds From Apache Maven - Understanding the build lifecycle However, the output from Gradle generally is very different than that of Maven, usually more concise. This is not always what you want. Below you will find some nice commands, options, and configurations that can make the output to the console more complete (a bit more like Maven). This can be particularly helpful when building in a pipeline (eg. GitLab, GitHub, etc.), in which case log files and build reports are usually less or not available. Most of the time all you have is the output to standard out, in which case you would like it to be as complete as possible, specially when the build fails.