Gradle plugin

The Android plugin for Gradle works with the build toolkit to provide processes and configurable settings that are specific to building and testing Android applications . Gradle and the Android plugin run independent of Android Studio.

The Java plugin adds Java compilation along with testing and bundling capabilities to a project . It serves as the basis for many of the other JVM language Gradle plugins. You can find a comprehensive introduction and overview to the Java Plugin in the Building Java Projects chapter.

Gradle uses whichever JDK it finds in your path (to check, use java -version). Alternatively, you can set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the install directory of the desired JDK.