How to get file path to binary JAR produced by another subproject?

Old Forum
1

Quick question: How to get file path to binary JAR with classes produced by another subproject?

Longer version: Multi-project build. Subproject ‘App’ depends in subproject ‘Shared’. In my plugin I need get access to compiled classes from ‘Shared’ used in ‘App’ module. Initially I just used:

project(':shared').sourceSets.main.output.classesDir.flatten()

but I spotted that Gradle creates a JAR file and uses it as a dependency. So I need to take that JAR use a reference to it (e.g. as ‘File’) to do processing. How can I do that?

2

A project dependency is effectively a dependency on a file (or collection of files). If the project you depend on is a Java project, then in that case you are already describing a dependency to the JAR. In order to isolate the artifact dependency it’s often convenient to create a ‘Configuration’ for that one dependency.

configurations {

foo {

transitive false

}

}

dependencies {

foo project(’:shared’)

}

Then you can access the JAR through the configuration.

configurations.foo.singleFile

3

I hoped for something simpler, but in the end that solves my problem. Thanks Mark.

4

Accidentally I have found one more solution which works:

project(':shared').jar.outputs.files.getFiles()

It is less flexible, but in many cases it should give the same result. WDYT?

1 Like
5

In general you should use project dependencies to convey dependencies across projects. Dependencies to individual project tasks is typically more brittle and doesn’t necessarily properly describe the “output” of that project.