Gradle build of Android app in VSTS failing after running out of memory

Question

I have a gradle build in VSTS that is building an Android app and it's failing with the below error. Does the build machine really have to little memory or should I change some settings in gradle.properties, e.g. the org.gradle.jvmargs settings?

:app:transformDexArchiveWithExternalLibsDexMergerForDebug
Expiring Daemon because JVM Tenured space is exhausted
Problem in daemon expiration check
org.gradle.internal.event.ListenerNotificationException: Failed to notify daemon expiration listener.
    at org.gradle.internal.event.AbstractBroadcastDispatch.dispatch(AbstractBroadcastDispatch.java:86)
    at org.gradle.internal.event.DefaultListenerManager$EventBroadcast$ListenerDispatch.dispatch(DefaultListenerManager.java:341)
    at org.gradle.internal.event.DefaultListenerManager$EventBroadcast.dispatch(DefaultListenerManager.java:152)
    at org.gradle.internal.event.DefaultListenerManager$EventBroadcast.dispatch(DefaultListenerManager.java:126)
    at org.gradle.internal.dispatch.ProxyDispatchAdapter$DispatchingInvocationHandler.invoke(ProxyDispatchAdapter.java:93)
    at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy3.onExpirationEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.Daemon$DaemonExpirationPeriodicCheck.run(Daemon.java:271)
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ExecutorPolicy$CatchAndRecordFailures.onExecute(ExecutorPolicy.java:63)
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ManagedExecutorImpl$1.run(ManagedExecutorImpl.java:46)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:308)
    at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:180)
    at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:294)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ThreadFactoryImpl$ManagedThreadRunnable.run(ThreadFactoryImpl.java:55)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: GC overhead limit exceeded
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.findLoadedClass0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.findLoadedClass(ClassLoader.java:1038)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:406)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:411)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
    at org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.DaemonRegistryUpdater.onExpire(DaemonRegistryUpdater.java:86)
    at org.gradle.launcher.daemon.server.Daemon$DefaultDaemonExpirationListener.onExpirationEvent(Daemon.java:303)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at org.gradle.internal.dispatch.ReflectionDispatch.dispatch(ReflectionDispatch.java:35)
    at org.gradle.internal.dispatch.ReflectionDispatch.dispatch(ReflectionDispatch.java:24)
    at org.gradle.internal.event.DefaultListenerManager$ListenerDetails.dispatch(DefaultListenerManager.java:371)
    at org.gradle.internal.event.DefaultListenerManager$ListenerDetails.dispatch(DefaultListenerManager.java:353)
    at org.gradle.internal.event.AbstractBroadcastDispatch.dispatch(AbstractBroadcastDispatch.java:58)
    ... 16 more
Expiring Daemon because JVM Tenured space is exhausted
Daemon will be stopped at the end of the build after running out of JVM memory
:app:transformDexArchiveWithExternalLibsDexMergerForDebug FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':app:transformDexArchiveWithExternalLibsDexMergerForDebug'.
> GC overhead limit exceeded

Answer 1

After specifying parameter org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx2048M -XX\:MaxHeapSize\=32g in file gradle.properties the build started working.