Getting tons of memory errors while Gradle Proguard optimizing

Question

I ran ./gradlew proguard --debug for my Java app to inspect why is it not finishing in hours, this is what I am seeing:

17:14:11.431 [INFO] [system.out] Optimizing...
17:14:13.537 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting OS memory status event {Total: 8589934592, Free: 2029916160}
17:14:13.538 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.health.LowMemoryDaemonExpirationStrategy] Received memory status update: {Total: 8589934592, Free: 2029916160}
17:14:13.538 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting JVM memory status event {Maximum: 954728448, Committed: 580386816}
17:14:18.535 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting OS memory status event {Total: 8589934592, Free: 2014097408}
17:14:18.535 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.health.LowMemoryDaemonExpirationStrategy] Received memory status update: {Total: 8589934592, Free: 2014097408}
17:14:18.535 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting JVM memory status event {Maximum: 954728448, Committed: 578289664}
17:14:20.726 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.Daemon] DaemonExpirationPeriodicCheck running
17:14:20.727 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Waiting to acquire shared lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:20.727 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Lock acquired on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:20.727 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Releasing lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:20.727 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Waiting to acquire shared lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:20.727 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Lock acquired on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:20.728 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Releasing lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:23.538 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting OS memory status event {Total: 8589934592, Free: 1980108800}
17:14:23.538 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.health.LowMemoryDaemonExpirationStrategy] Received memory status update: {Total: 8589934592, Free: 1980108800}
17:14:23.538 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting JVM memory status event {Maximum: 954728448, Committed: 534773760}
17:14:28.536 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting OS memory status event {Total: 8589934592, Free: 2000781312}
17:14:28.536 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.health.LowMemoryDaemonExpirationStrategy] Received memory status update: {Total: 8589934592, Free: 2000781312}
17:14:28.537 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting JVM memory status event {Maximum: 954728448, Committed: 575668224}
17:14:30.725 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.Daemon] DaemonExpirationPeriodicCheck running
17:14:30.725 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Waiting to acquire shared lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:30.725 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Lock acquired on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:30.726 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Releasing lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:30.726 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Waiting to acquire shared lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:30.726 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Lock acquired on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:30.726 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.cache.internal.DefaultFileLockManager] Releasing lock on daemon addresses registry.
17:14:33.535 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting OS memory status event {Total: 8589934592, Free: 1986662400}
17:14:33.536 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.health.LowMemoryDaemonExpirationStrategy] Received memory status update: {Total: 8589934592, Free: 1986662400}
17:14:33.536 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting JVM memory status event {Maximum: 954728448, Committed: 570425344}
17:14:38.539 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting OS memory status event {Total: 8589934592, Free: 1962721280}
17:14:38.539 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.health.LowMemoryDaemonExpirationStrategy] Received memory status update: {Total: 8589934592, Free: 1962721280}
17:14:38.539 [DEBUG] [org.gradle.process.internal.health.memory.MemoryManager] Emitting JVM memory status event {Maximum: 954728448, Committed: 571473920}

I assume these errors might be the cause, since they are getting printed every second. I tried setting this in gradle.properties, but no change:

GRADLE_OPTS = "-Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=2048m"

Answer 1

To configure Gradle JVM memory you need to set org.gradle.jvmargs in gradle.properties, as described in Build Environment / Configuring JVM memory

Example from the documentation:

org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx2g -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=512m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

---

GRADLE_OPTS will not work for you, because:

• GRADLE_OPTS is an environment variable and not a gradle.property configuration, therefore it has no effect when put into gradle.properties. It needs to be set before starting Gradle. For example, like this:

  export GRADLE_OPTS="some opts here"
  gradle build
  

• According to the Gradle documentation, GRADLE_OPTS only configures the Gradle client, but your build is most probably running in a Gradle Daemon.

See Build Environment / Environment variables for more details.