Why would I run gradle clean build instead of gradle build?
From what I understand, Gradle can detect source changes and update the final artifacts if needed. So why would I still need to clean?
The clean task is defined by the java plugin and it simply removes the buildDir folder, thus cleaning everything including leftovers from previous builds which are no longer relevant. Not doing so may result in an unclean build which may be broken due to build artifacts produced by previous builds.
As an example assume that your build contains several tests that were failed and you decided that these are obsolete thus needs to be removed. Without cleaning the test results (using cleanTest task) or the build entirely (by running the clean task) you'll get stuck with the failed tests results which will cause your build to fail. Similar side effects can happen also with resources/classes removed from the sources but remained in the build folder that was not cleaned.