Gradle - Recursively include external project and its subprojects

gradle

Solution

You're right. You can import an external project, or even external subprojects, and reference them in your main project, but as soon as you compile the external entities they fail to resolve with the expected names.

I found that you can rename the external projects in your main project so that they match the names of the external projects. That way your main project and the external projects use the same name.

Change your `service/settings.gradle` to:

include "shared-library"
project(":shared-library").projectDir = new File("/projects/shared-library")

include "shared-library:module2"
project('shared-library:module2').name = ':module2'

include "shared-library:module1"
project('shared-library:module1').name = ':module1'

Now in your project and external project refer to your modules always as `:module1` and `:module2`. In `service/build.gradle` use:

compile(project(":module1"))

Problem

I have a gradle project with many submodules named `shared-library`. I have a project named `service` that depends on one of the modules of `shared-library`. e.g., it depends on `:shared-library:module1`. Normally, I get this dependency from maven. Now I want to modify `shared-library` and test my changes using the dependent project. Instead of making a change to `shared-library`, building, deploying to maven, then rebuilding my `service`, I'd like to instead have `service` depend on the `shared-library` gradle project directly. So I found out that you can point gradle to arbitrary project directories on the filesystem: service/settings.gradle ``` include "shared-library" project(":shared-library").projectDir = new File("/projects/shared-library") ``` But when I do this, the project is not aware of `shared-library`'s submodules. I cannot do this: service/build.gradle ``` compile( project(":shared-library:module1"), ) ``` So I tried `include`ing them directly. `:shared-library:module1` depends on `:shared-library:module2` so I include that one as well: service/settings.gradle ``` include "shared-library" project(":shared-library").projectDir = new File("/projects/shared-library") include "shared-library:module2" include "shared-library:module1" ``` But now when I try to run this, it complains that `:shared-library:module1` cannot locate a project named `:module2`. This is because its dependency is configured as such: shared-library/module1/build.gradle ``` compile( project(":module2") ) ``` But if I change that to an absolute project path, now `shared-library` cannot compile on its own: shared-library/module1/build.gradle ``` compile( project(":shared-library:module2") ) ``` tl;dr, it seems like there is a mismatch between the way `service` resolves the `shared-library` submodule names and how `shared-library` does it.

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