In Multi Flavour app, how to avoid duplicate resources

Question

If I have 3 flavors flavor1, flavor2 and flavour3, each flavor has Dev,Pat and Prod "sub-flavours" versions which different parameters , but each main flavor have different resources.

So I have now 9 different flavors, but only 3 different resource folders). I would like the same "sub-flavors" to use the same resources.

How can I do that? I have seen in the documentation about the flavorDimensions but not sure how to configure the resource folder.

At the moment I am using something like

sourceSets {

   flavor1_dev{
            res.srcDir  'src/flavor1/res'
        }

   flavor1_prod{
            res.srcDir  'src/flavor1/res'
        }

   flavor2_dev{
            res.srcDir  'src/flavor2/res'
        }

   flavor2_prod{
            res.srcDir  'src/flavor2/res'
        }

}

Yeah it works but I would like to know how to use the flavorDimensions , or if there is any other way to do it. — Kenenisa Bekele, Feb 08 '16 at 17:14
You can exclude resources from different flavor builds, check this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33263567/how-to-exclude-res-folder-from-gradle-build-flavours/45581826#45581826 — lxknvlk, Aug 09 '17 at 04:49

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

You need Gradle flavours eg. flavor1, flavor2 etc, as well as Build Types like dev, prod etc.

See the example from: http://developer.android.com/tools/building/configuring-gradle.html and http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/user-guide#TOC-Sourcesets-and-Dependencies

For example:

android.sourceSets.flavor1Debug Location src/flavor1Debug/

android.sourceSets.flavor1Release Location src/flavor1Release/

android.sourceSets.flavor2Debug Location src/flavor2Debug/

android.sourceSets.flavor2Release Location src/flavor2Release/

Also, this question is very similar How can I specify per flavor buildType sourceSets?

Any idea on how to do it with flavorDimension ? http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/user-guide#TOC-Multi-flavor-variants — Kenenisa Bekele, Feb 08 '16 at 17:41

score -2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 15 '16 at 19:13

Just put common resources in the main/res. All the resources in the main/res will be overridden by the flavour. For example if you want to override string resources add,

main string file: /src/main/res/values/strings.xml

<resources>
    <string name="app_name">Main</string>
    <string name="app_name_full">Main app</string>
    <string name="app_email">main@abc.com</string>
    <string name="app_phone">123</string>
    <string name="app_website">www.abc.com</string>
</resources>

and flavour string file: /src/flavor1/res/values/strings.xml

<resources>
    <string name="app_name">Flavour App Name</string>
</resources>

Only app_name is going to changed in the flavour and other resources like app_full_name is still accessible in all flavours.

You cannot use main and expect it to be overridden. This will not work. Main should be used for "in everything", else it needs to be separated. — StarWind0, Jul 08 '16 at 13:16
@StarWind has a point here this will fail at compile time with "duplicate resources" — box, Aug 20 '17 at 21:08

In Multi Flavour app, how to avoid duplicate resources

2 Answers2