Better way of using a few different resources files per build flavor

Question

I am trying to build an Android project which has 6 build flavors. Each has just 1 resource file that is unique to it. The Ant build copies the file from res/configs/ to res/raw/ for each flavor. I did not want to break that build and I could not figure out how to get the Gradle Android build to work with this folder structure. So I added a copy phase to get a common resource folder and then one for each flavor with just that 1 file. ``` task cleanExtra(type: Delete) { delete 'res-common' delete 'res-dev' delete 'res-qa' delete 'res-sb' delete 'res-test' delete 'res-stage' delete 'res-prod' } task setUpSharedResources(type: Copy) { from 'res' into 'res-common' exclude '**/environment.properties' } task setUpDevResources(type: Copy ) { from 'configs/dev/' into 'res-dev/raw/' } task setUpQaResources(type: Copy ) { from 'configs/qa/' into 'res-qa/raw/' } task setUpSbResources(type: Copy ) { from 'configs/sb/' into 'res-sb/raw/' } task setUpTestResources(type: Copy ) { from 'configs/test/…

Accepted Answer

This is overkill.

all you need is:

```
src/main/res
```

This is your common resources for all your flavors

```
src/dev/res
```

This is the resources specific to the `dev` flavor.

```
src/prod/res
```

This is the resources specific to the `prod` flavor.

etc...

Note: if you have a resource both in `src/main/res` and `src/<flavor>/res`, the one in the flavor res folder will win.

Each flavor will actually get the combined resources of its own res folder and the one in `src/main/res`

There's no need to manually copy things, it's all done for you. One of the advantages also is that the copying/merging of the resource folders will be done incrementally which will be faster and more efficient.

It seems you are using `res` instead of `src/main/res` so maybe you are using the old legacy folder structure. This is not a problem, you can keep remapping the folders, but only specify one of them:

```
android {
    sourceSets {
        main {
            res.srcDirs    = ['res']
        }
        dev {
            res.srcDirs    = ['res-dev']
        }
        prod {
            res.srcDirs    = ['res-prod']
        }
        etc...
    }
}
```

Note sure what is going with your 'test' flavor. Is it really a different flavor for your build or is it your test apk?

Edit: For your resource merging issue: it's not a merge. A merge is between different sourceSets. So `src/main/raw/foo.prop` gets overridden by `src/debug/raw/foo.prop`. However, in your case, think, you have the same resources in 2 source folders that are set on the same sourcesets. This is because you set on each sourceSets both the common res folder and the flavor specific res.

When you let the merger do its thing, there's a clear overriding order. Flavors override main source sets and build types override flavors.

When you have two res folders associated with the same flavor, we cannot know which one to choose.

Better way of using a few different resources files per build flavor

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