Gradle dependencies for non multi project environment - eclipse

Question

After some research, I was able to create a non multi project with two projects. Sounds strange? Isn't. It's normal that you don't put all your projects under one root project.
Reading a lot about multi project builds I wondered, why it is so complicated to use one project with another that are not in the same root project.
The only way, that worked for me so fare, is to use Maven publishing.
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'maven-publish'
group = 'foo'
version = '0.2.1'
repositories {
mavenCentral()
mavenLocal()
}
jar { baseName = "${project.group}.${project.name}" }
publishing {
publications {
maven(MavenPublication) {
artifactId "${project.name}"
artifact sourceJar { classifier "sources" }
from components.java
}
}
}
task sourceJar(type: Jar) { from sourceSets.main.allJava }
task wrapper(type: Wrapper) { gradleVersion = '1.11' }
Using: gradlew clean build publishToMavenLocal creates two jar libraries (binary and source) at the correct location in the local maven repository .m2
The second project, that depends on the first one has this build.gradle
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
group = 'foo2'
version = '0.1'
repositories {
mavenCentral()
mavenLocal()
}
dependencies {
compile("foo:Gradle.test2:0.+")
}
jar { baseName = "${project.group}.${project.name}" }
task wrapper(type: Wrapper) { gradleVersion = '1.11' }
Worked for me. After rebuilding the dependencies I always have the newest version.
Now why do I need the Maven workaround when using Gradle? Can't I publish to the local Gradle cache? What Alternatives are available?

Answer 1

Creating a project dependency without using a common root project is easy once you know how:
In the second project (ProjectTwo), that depends on the first project (ProjectOne), put the following in your settings.gradle file:
include ':ProjectOne'
project(':ProjectOne').projectDir = new File(settingsDir, '../ProjectOne')
The second line above assumes that ProjectOne shares the same parent directory as ProjectTwo, but you can use any relative path to set the correct directory location. Now you can add ProjectOne as a dependency in ProjectTwo's build.gradle file:
dependencies {
compile project(':ProjectOne')
}