CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-studiogradlebuild.gradleandroid-productflavors
Parmaia
Parmaia

Reputation: 1172

How to use multiple res.srcDirs and override some resources with gradle

I want to build different versions of my app based on different productFlavors, but need some degree of flexibility that I can't achieve yet.

This is my folder structure:

+src
  +main
    +java
    +res
  +base
    +java
    +res
  +custom1
    +java
    +res
  +custom2
    +res

The common code is on main (a service) and the base ui is on base (the activity). Then a custom version of the app that defines a new ui is on custom1 (new activity). This is running fine. But I need another version of the app (custom2) that uses the base ui, but changing some of the res (icons, strings or colors).

What I'm trying in my build.gradle file is:

android{
    ...
  productFlavors {
    base {
      ...
    }
    custom1 {
      ...
    }
    custom2 {
      ...
    }
  }

  sourceSets{
    custom2{
      java.srcDirs = ['src/base/java']
      res.srcDirs = ['src/custom2/res', 'src/base/res']
    }
  }
}

To specify that custom2 will use the source code and resources of base and the resources of custom2.

The problem is that I get a:

Error: Duplicate resources: <project_path>/src/base/res/values-es/strings.xml:string-en/app_name, <project_path>/src/custom2/res/values-es/strings.xml:string-en/app_name

Because app_name is defined both on base and on custom2, but my goal is to override the definition of resources in base with the ones of custom2.

I know that app_name will be overriden in main if I don't specify anything in res.srcDirs for custom2, but then all the resources from base will be unavailable.

Is the approach correct? or I'm abusing of the flexibility that Gradle offers? or there is a way to do what I'm trying to do?

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 19

Views: 21476

Answers (3)

xuanwenchao
xuanwenchao

Reputation: 29

you can set one path that override res files, and there are no base res files in custom2/res.

custom2.res.srcDir=['src/custom2/res']

it will search src/custom2/res path first, if file not exist find src/main/res automatically in compiling.

Upvotes: 1

Gabriele Mariotti
Gabriele Mariotti

Reputation: 364978

You can't achieve it in this way.

There is a priority in resource merging:

The merged resources are coming from 3 types of sources:

  • The main resources, associated with the main sourceSet, generally located in src/main/res
  • The variant overlays, coming from the Build Type, and Flavor(s).
  • The Library Project dependencies, which contribute resources through the res entry in their aar bundle.

As described here

As mentioned above, each sourceSet can define multiple resource folders. For instance:

android.sourceSets {
   main.res.srcDirs = ['src/main/res', 'src/main/res2']
}

In this case, both resource folders have the same priority. This means that if a resource is declared in both folders, the merge will fail and an error will be reported.

The same happens in your case. You can't duplicate the same resources in this way.

Upvotes: 17

Chase Turner
Chase Turner

Reputation: 51

I was able to achieve something like this by adding another level of folders at the sibling of src, called shared, and then manually checking + assembling the necessary resources in an additional script so as to avoid duplicates.

script is available here: https://github.com/smbgood/examples/blob/master/family-resources.gradle

Resources will go into folders like this (we have 3 app 'families', IG, JB + CB):
/shared/JB/res/values/ids.xml

For each build variant we have now, there is a property in ids.xml 'family' that determines which app family to use. When building, the script examines drawables and xml files found in shared, compares them against the ones present in the variant, and then removes the overlapping items, finally writing out the needed items to an /assembled/ folder.

Upvotes: 1

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