Glossary

A credential used by build tools and API clients to authenticate with the Develocity server. Access keys are generated in user settings and passed to builds via environment variables or plugin configuration.

A machine or container in a CI/CD pipeline that executes builds. Develocity plugins running on build agents publish Build Scans and access remote Build Cache or Artifact Cache resources. See also Test Distribution Agent.

The credential used to authenticate programmatic requests to Develocity APIs. In Develocity, the same access key is used for both build tool and API authentication. See Access Key.

A Develocity feature that proxies and caches resolved build dependencies, reducing WAN download costs and improving build reliability when upstream repositories are slow or unavailable. Artifact Cache instances can be deployed at Edge Nodes positioned close to CI infrastructure. See: Artifact Cache.

A signed, tamper-evident record of how a software artifact was built, including the build tool, inputs, dependencies, and repository sources. Provenance Governor generates attestations from Build Scan data and evaluates them against policies to verify compliance.

A feature that stores and reuses outputs from previous builds to improve build performance. See: Build Cache.

A server component that stores and serves build artifacts for the Build Cache feature. See: Build Cache Node.

The process of copying Build Cache entries between Build Cache Nodes, for example from a regional node to a central node, to improve cache hit rates across distributed teams.

A Develocity feature that compares two builds side by side to identify differences in task inputs, environment, dependency versions, and custom values that account for performance differences or unexpected build behavior.

A streaming protocol used by Bazel to publish build events, such as actions, test results, and artifacts, to a backend such as Develocity.

Key performance indicators of a build, such as execution time, cache hit rate, and parallelism.

A detailed record of a build, including performance metrics, dependencies, environment details, and failures. Used for debugging and optimizing builds. See: Build Scan.

The former name of the Develocity Gradle Plugin. The plugin was renamed from Build Scan™ to Develocity with Gradle 6.0 and plugin version 3.0. Projects using the legacy name should migrate to the Develocity Gradle Plugin.

The process of collecting data from a build (e.g., inputs, outputs, environment) for analysis and diagnostics.

Develocity’s ability to integrate with Continuous Integration tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) for build data collection and insights.

Named URLs attached to a Build Scan, linking a build record to related systems such as source commits, CI pipeline runs, or deployment artifacts. See Metadata Enrichment.

User-authored annotations added to a Build Scan through build logic. Tags are free-text labels; custom values are key-value pairs. Both are searchable and filterable in Develocity. See Metadata Enrichment or the per-tool Extending Build Scans reference for implementation details.

A visual interface in Develocity that provides summaries, charts, and drill-down views of builds, performance, and trends.

A performance and productivity platform for software builds and tests, formerly known as Gradle Enterprise.

A REST API providing programmatic access to Build Scan data, project configuration, and Develocity server administration. See: Develocity API reference.

The Develocity command-line tool for installing, upgrading, and administering Develocity server instances (Kubernetes and standalone deployments), and for generating support bundles. See: Develocity CLI.

A lightweight Develocity server component deployed close to build agents to reduce latency for Build Cache access, Artifact Cache operations, Build Scan uploads, and MCP requests. See: Develocity Edge.

A Develocity API that allows programmatic access to Build Scan and performance data for external analysis. See: Export API reference.

A Develocity feature that analyzes build and test failure patterns, groups similar failures by root cause, and tracks their frequency over time to help teams prioritize and resolve recurring problems. See also Failure Classification and Test Analytics.

A Develocity feature that groups similar build and test failures by pattern, making it easier to identify recurring problems and prioritize fixes.

A Develocity feature that identifies tests that pass and fail non-deterministically across multiple builds, helping teams distinguish genuine failures from noise.

Develocity’s former name, used until 2023 when the product was renamed. Plugins and extensions formerly under the Gradle Enterprise name have since been renamed to Develocity equivalents.

A plugin applied to Gradle builds that enables Develocity integration, such as publishing Build Scans or using the remote Build Cache. See: Develocity Gradle Plugin.

Automated tests run by Develocity to ensure its components (e.g., cache nodes, data collectors) are functioning correctly.

Annotating Build Scans with additional context beyond what Develocity captures by default. Includes user-authored annotations (custom tags, values, and links added via the Build Scan API) and automatic origin attribution provided by the Common Custom User Data Plugins. See Metadata Enrichment.

A Develocity capability that allows builds to register obfuscation functions that mask identifying information—such as usernames, hostnames, and network addresses—before it’s stored in a Build Scan.

A rule defined in Provenance Governor that evaluates build attestations against expected criteria, such as approved dependency sources or signing keys. When a build’s attestations don’t satisfy a policy, the Policy Scan™ reports a violation.

A Develocity feature that uses a machine-learning model trained on historical build data to predict which tests are likely to be affected by a code change, running only those tests to reduce CI cycle time. See: Predictive Test Selection.

A unique identifier assigned to a software project in Develocity, used to scope build scans, cache entries, and access control policies to a specific project.

A verifiable record of how a software artifact was produced, including the build tool used, inputs, environment, and signing identity. Provenance Governor uses these records to verify that builds meet an organization’s compliance requirements.

A Develocity feature that provides historical analysis of test suite health across builds, including pass/fail trends, flakiness rates, and test duration history. Teams use Test Analytics to monitor test suite stability and prioritize which tests to stabilize.

A Develocity feature that splits test suite execution across multiple agents running in parallel, reducing total test execution time. See: Test Distribution.

A process running on a build agent that receives and executes test partitions assigned by the Develocity Test Distribution feature. See: Test Distribution.