How to declare the dependencies of a library project when those dependencies should be fulfilled by the consuming application?

Question

I'm developing an android library that depends on some third party aars and jars.

Currently, these dependencies are declared in the library module's gradle buildscript like so:

repositories {
        flatDir{
            dirs 'libs', 'android-libs'
        }
}

dependencies{
    compile(name: 'threetenabp-1.0.5', ext: 'aar')
    compile fileTree(include: ['*.jar'], dir: 'libs')
}

However, this results in the dependencies' classes being built into the aar, potentially causing conflicts when the library is used in an application.

How can I reference these dependencies from my library without actually packaging them into the library?

I have tried changing the declarations from "compile" to "provided" and then compiling the files into the application, but when I do this my library fails to build.

I am not certain, but i think this can help you : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31731014/what-does-transitive-true-in-gradle-exactly-do-w-r-t-crashlytics — Henrique César Madeira, Oct 24 '17 at 20:02
Hmm, thanks, but the discussion there seems to center around the function of the "transitive" flag. While that is related to dependencies, I don't think it applies to my problem. — duggulous, Oct 24 '17 at 20:33

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 24 '17 at 22:00

After some reading at https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/dependency_management.html#sec:how_to_declare_your_dependencies I eventually figured out that using compile fileTree will package the dependencies into the output library. To avoid this, declare each dependency individually, using the following syntax:

dependencies {
compile: name: 'filename-without-extension' 
}

And the dependencies will no longer be packaged into the output.

The project making use of the output aar will still need to include the flat-dir repository that holds the jar files, like so:

repositories {
        flatDir{
            dirs 'libs'
        }
}

How to declare the dependencies of a library project when those dependencies should be fulfilled by the consuming application?

1 Answers1