CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-studiogradleandroid-gradle-plugin
zafrani
zafrani

Reputation: 4101

Gradle include dependencies of a dependency

Scenario

I have two Android libraries:

Library B depends on Library A and includes it from its build.gradle.

My Android app needs to use Library B and some base classes from Library A. The only success I've had in doing this is including both libraries in my Android app's build.gradle and setting transitive to false.

Question:

Is there a way for me to only add Library B and have access to its dependency from my Android app?

Android Studio

Android Studio 3.1 Canary
Build #AI-171.4415322, built on October 24, 2017
JRE: 1.8.0_152-release-1012-b01 x86_64
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o
Mac OS X 10.12.6

Gradle

3.1.0-alpha01

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3352

Answers (2)

user6490462
user6490462

Reputation:

From comments if you need to use library A inside your app and your library A included into B using implementation project(':LibA'), then it won't be a transitive to your main app.

You have to include it into B using api, api project(':LibA').

The api configuration should be used for dependencies that are exported to external modules (transitive dependency). Vice-Versa implementation configuration should be used for dependencies that are internal to the component (not transitive dependency).

Upvotes: 4

Jeffrey Blattman
Jeffrey Blattman

Reputation: 22637

That's called a transitive dependency.

Gradle, and all other dependency systems handle this automatically. If B needs A, you get A. If you are not getting A, that means B's dependencies are not correct.

Whether you should explicitly call out A in your dependencies is a debated topic. I'm of the camp that you should not. My reasoning is that you can end up with something like this,

include B(v1.0) -depends on-> A(1.0)
include A(1.1)

Now, which version of A gets compiled into your app and used at runtime? A 1.0 or A 1.1? The answer depends on the implementation of the build system.

  • If it's A 1.0, then YOU are compiling against 1.1 but running against 1.0.
  • If it's 1.1, then B is compiled against 1.0 but is using 1.1 at runtime.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions