Android Studio and Gradle build error

I've been using the new preview of android studio and really like it. But recently my project won't build. I get the following error:

Gradle: 
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':TestProj:compileDebug'.
> Compilation failed; see the compiler error output for details.

* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.

Could not execute build using Gradle distribution 'http://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-1.6-bin.zip'.

Question is how do I enable the stack trace so I can get to the root of the error. As it is I really have no idea what's causing this.

If you are using the Gradle Wrapper (the recommended option in Android Studio), you enable stacktrace by running gradlew compileDebug --stacktrace from the command line in the root folder of your project (where the gradlew file is).

If you are not using the gradle wrapper, you use gradle compileDebug --stacktrace instead (presumably).

You don't really need to run with --stacktrace though, running gradlew compileDebug by itself, from the command line, should tell you where the error is.

I based this information on this comment:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16580776/android-studio-new-project-can-not-run-throwing-error#comment23901058_16580776

Similar to @joe_deniable 's answer the thing I found with my own projects was that gradle would output that kind of error when there was a misconfiguration of my system.

I discovered that by running gradlew installDebug or similar command from the terminal I got better output as to what the real problem was.

e.g. initially it turns out my JAVA_HOME was not setup correctly. Then I discovered it encountered errors because I didn't have a package space setup correctly. Etc.

The only solution I've found is to first create the project in Android Studio, then close the project, then import the project. I searched all over and could not find the root cause and all other solutions people posted didn't work.

OK seems like a caching issue of some sort. There was indeed an error in code with the R.id.some_id not being found but the editor was not picking it up displaying that there were no errors.

I installed Android Studio on an old WinXP with only for me option. After install I did the new project wizard and when opening the new project a got some Gradle error with some failed path to my instalation dir. c:/Document"#¤!"#¤ and settins/...

The I uninstalled and did a new install with option for all users (C:/Programs/..) then I opend the previous created project with no errors.

So it might be a path problem. (Just spent 10 sec debugging, so I might be wrong but it solved my gradle error)

I found this post helpful:

"It can happen when res folder contains unexpected folder names. In my case after merge mistakes I had a folder src/main/res/res. And it caused problems."

from: "https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/adt-dev/0pEUKhEBMIA/ZxO5FNRjF8QJ"

Edit the gradle wrapper settings in gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties and change gradle-1.6-bin.zip to gradle-2.4-bin.zip.

./gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties :

#Wed Apr 10 15:27:10 PDT 2013
distributionBase=GRADLE_USER_HOME
distributionPath=wrapper/dists
zipStoreBase=GRADLE_USER_HOME
zipStorePath=wrapper/dists
distributionUrl=http\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-1.8-bin.zip

It should compile without any error now.

Note: update version numbers with the most recent ones

I used a local distribution of gradle downloaded from gradle website and used it in android studio.

It fixed the gradle build error.