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And "running Gradle" literally is running Gradle

"compiling testing ..." is when using JVM toolchains feature (which imho you always should do to decouple the version used to run Gradle from the version used for your production sources)

It is explained right above that table also

&gt; Any fully supported version of Java can be used for compilation or testing. However, the latest Java version may only be supported for compilation or testing, not for running Gradle. Support is achieved using <https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/toolchains.html#toolchains|toolchains> and applies to all tasks supporting toolchains.