Build hangs on "groovyc: semantic analysis", can that be disabled?

I'm trying to setup IntelliJ IDEA CE 2018.1.3 to work on the Apache Groovy project itself.  It comes as gradle project but I was trying to set it up as "native" IDEA project so that running the tests will integrate with the IDEA test runner, etc.

My problem is that it now gets stuck on "groovyc: semantic analysis" built step.

This is what I've done so far
 

git clone https://github.com/apache/groovy
cd groovy
./gradlew idea # this will generate .ipr and .iml files 
# Open the groovy.ipr with IntelliJ IDEA 2018.1.3 
# Set Preferences > Compiler > Build process heap size > 2000 Mbytes
# Build > Build project

It seems that the build process more or less works (80% completion), and I thiink the code is compiled but then it hangs forever (I left it overnight)  at the "groovyc: semantic analysis (tests of groovy-xml and 8 more)".

The build logs do not say much

2018-05-09 16:45:13,134 [      0]   INFO - etbrains.jps.cmdline.BuildMain - ==================================================
2018-05-09 16:45:13,135 [      1]   INFO - etbrains.jps.cmdline.BuildMain - Build process started. Classpath: /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA CE.app/Contents/lib/jps-launcher.jar:/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_144.jdk/Contents/Home/lib/tools.jar:/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA CE.app/Contents/lib/optimizedFileManager.jar
2018-05-09 16:45:13,581 [    447]   INFO - etbrains.jps.cmdline.BuildMain - Connection to IDE established in 406 ms
2018-05-09 16:45:13,855 [    721]   INFO - jps.cmdline.JpsModelLoaderImpl - Loading model: project path = /Users/rl186056/github/groovy3/groovy.ipr, global options path = /Users/rl186056/Library/Preferences/IdeaIC2018.1/options
2018-05-09 16:45:14,444 [   1310]   INFO - jps.cmdline.JpsModelLoaderImpl - Model loaded in 588 ms
2018-05-09 16:45:14,444 [   1310]   INFO - jps.cmdline.JpsModelLoaderImpl - Project has 25 modules, 0 libraries
2018-05-09 16:45:14,584 [   1450]   INFO - ellij.util.io.PagedFileStorage - lower=100; upper=500; buffer=10; max=602
2018-05-09 16:45:14,968 [   1834]   INFO - .incremental.IncProjectBuilder - Building project; isRebuild:false; isMake:false parallel compilation:false
2018-05-09 16:45:14,972 [   1838]   INFO - kotlin.jps.build.KotlinBuilder - is Kotlin incremental compilation enabled: true
2018-05-09 16:45:15,006 [   1872]   INFO - kotlin.jps.build.KotlinBuilder - is Kotlin compiler daemon enabled: true
2018-05-09 16:45:15,006 [   1872]   INFO - kotlin.jps.build.KotlinBuilder - Label in local history: build started 34626761
2018-05-09 16:45:15,012 [   1878]   INFO - CompilerBackwardReferenceIndex - backward reference index version differ due to: class java.io.FileNotFoundException
2018-05-09 16:45:15,322 [   2188]   INFO - .incremental.IncProjectBuilder - Cleaned output directories in 310 ms
2018-05-09 16:46:00,256 [  47122]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 937 java files; module: groovy
2018-05-09 16:46:19,498 [  66364]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:22,392 [  69258]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 5 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:29,691 [  76557]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 31 java files; module: groovy-xml
2018-05-09 16:46:30,066 [  76932]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:30,920 [  77786]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:34,510 [  81376]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 9 java files; module: groovy-test
2018-05-09 16:46:34,687 [  81553]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:35,271 [  82137]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:39,793 [  86659]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 17 java files; module: groovy-templates
2018-05-09 16:46:40,049 [  86915]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:40,789 [  87655]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:46,210 [  93076]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 17 java files; module: groovy-macro
2018-05-09 16:46:46,475 [  93341]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:48,054 [  94920]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 1 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:48,160 [  95026]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 2 java files; module: groovy-dateutil
2018-05-09 16:46:48,231 [  95097]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:54,974 [ 101840]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:57,341 [ 104207]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 45 java files; module: groovy-groovydoc
2018-05-09 16:46:57,627 [ 104493]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:57,925 [ 104791]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:59,346 [ 106212]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 15 java files; module: groovy-ant
2018-05-09 16:46:59,550 [ 106416]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:46:59,794 [ 106660]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files
2018-05-09 16:48:27,963 [ 194829]   INFO - s.incremental.java.JavaBuilder - Compiling 262 java files; module: groovy-xml,groovy-test,groovy-templates,groovy-macro,groovy-dateutil,groovy-groovydoc,groovy-cli-picocli,groovy,groovy-ant (tests)
2018-05-09 16:48:32,510 [ 199376]   INFO - brains.jps.incremental.Builder - Dependency analysis found 0 affected files

My questions are:

* Can I disable this step?
* What IDEA features are dependent on this semantic analysis?