As Gradle executes, it acts on various pieces of the build definition, such as each project in the build.
Gradle tracks the state of each piece and transitions each piece through its lifecycle as the build runs.

A central part of the Gradle architecture is the "build state model", which holds the state for each piece and coordinates state transitions and other mutations. 

        api("org.ow2.asm:asm:$asmVersion")
        api("org.ow2.asm:asm-commons:$asmVersion")
        api("org.ow2.asm:asm-tree:$asmVersion")
        api("xerces:xercesImpl:2.12.2") {
            because("Maven Central and JCenter disagree on version 2.9.1 metadata")
        }
        api("net.bytebuddy:byte-buddy") { version { strictly("1.10.21") } }
        api("org.objenesis:objenesis") { version { strictly("3.1") } }
    }