What is the difference between gradlew assemble and gradlew compile

Question

I noticed that

./gradlew tasks

for my android project gives me assemble* and compile* tasks.

What is the difference?

I also noticed that the command lists the tasks compileDemoDebugSources as well as compileDemoReleaseSources (where demo is a flavor and release is a build type) but only assembleDemo (instead of assembleDemoDebug and assembleDemoRelease ) -- however the latter two work just as fine. Why is that?

Answer 1

From official manual:

|---------------------|-----------------------------|
|          Task       |    Description   -----------|
|---------------------|-----------------------------|
|      compileJava    |  Compiles production Java   |
|                     |  source files using javac   |
|---------------------|-----------------------------|
|        assemble     |  Assembles all the archives |
|                     |      in the project         |
|---------------------|-----------------------------|

To investigate further, read Gradle 4.0 documentation:

• Table 47.3. Java plugin - lifecycle tasks
• Table 47.1. Java plugin - tasks

PS drkstr1 has already mentioned main differences in the comment.