Develop Reference

Where are build types of the app defined?

I know we can edit build types in Android Studio:
I know we can edit each build type setting in gradle:
android {
buildTypes {
release {
minifyEnabled true
}
}
I know we can detect build types in code. How do I detect if I am in release or debug mode?
But where actually are the build types defined? Let say I want to commit it to git. What should I do to keep build types of the project consistent?

Where actually are the build types defined?
Basically, BuildConfig is the auto-generated class that resides under path :
app/build/generated/source/buildConfig/yourBuildType/yourPackageName/BuildConfig.java.
This class holds variables provided by buildTypes {} block from app level build.gradle file. So, on every clean & rebuild of project, Gradle auto generates BuildConfig class that can be used in further Android development environment.
I.e. BuildConfig.DEBUG is the default variable that we can use in our application code to determine it's buildType.
We can provide our own fields through buildType from build.gradle file like following:
android {
. . .
buildTypes {
debug {
buildConfigField "String", "SOME_VARIABLE", '"This string value is from build config class"'
}
}
. . .
}

android build variant: show java sources of all product flavors

android {
buildTypes {
...
}
productFlavors {
demo {}
full{}
}
}
sources:
src/demo/java
src/full/java
Inside android studio, with android view, only the sources of one product flavor of currently selected build variant can be seen. Is there a way to see all source codes of all product flavors with android view?

Android: How to reset resConfigs for release variant?

To make development faster, I want to do the following:
android {
defaultConfig {
resConfigs "en"
}
}
My app has a lot of languages, and doing this saves significant time while developing. However, I do NOT want to release a version with this set. Unfortunately, resConfigs is not available on product flavors or build types, so I can't set it in debug {}, for example.
How can I automatically exclude resConfigs from release variants? I do not want to have to remember comment out that line of code when I'm building for release.

Wouldn't this work?
Detect the debug build, reset the configurations and add your desired debug configuration.
applicationVariants.all { variant ->
if (variant.buildType.name == "debug") {
variant.mergedFlavor.resourceConfigurations.clear()
variant.mergedFlavor.resourceConfigurations.add("en")
}
}

My solution was inspired by this answer to a related question. Here's how you do it:
in app/build.gradle
// Reset `resConfigs` for release
afterEvaluate {
android.applicationVariants.all { variant ->
if (variant.buildType.name.equals('release')) {
variant.mergedFlavor.#mResourceConfiguration = null
}
}
}
This works because mResourceConfiguration is the backing field for resConfigs. Unfortunately, The Android Gradle DSL does not currently expose a method to reset resConfigs, so we're forced to access the field directly using the groovy #<fieldName> syntax. This works, even though mResourceConfiguration is private.
WARNING: this solution is a little fragile, as the Android Gradle build tools team could change the name of that field at any time, since it is not part of the public API.

Gradle: How do I define build type for specific flavors only?

I have been using gradle for creating different build variants for different companies for an Android app.
For example I have build flavors:
Company1
Company2
And then I have build types:
Production
Preview
Development
So this will create 6 build variants:
Company1Production
Company1Preview
Company1Development
Company2Production
Company2Preview
Company2Development
So the question is:
Actually I don't need the development build type for company 2, I only need it for company 1.
Is there a way I can specify only company 1 have the development build type?
I have a lot of companies in my projects, some of the build type just don't make sense for those companies, and it confuses people who want to build the app.

To answer my own question, I have found the documentation on the Gradle Plugin User Guide
Filtering Variants
When you add dimensions and flavors, you can end up with variants that don't make sense. For example you may define a flavor that uses your Web API and a flavor that uses hard-coded fake data, for faster testing. The second flavor is only useful for development, but not in release builds. You can remove this variant using the variantFilter closure, like this:
android {
productFlavors {
realData
fakeData
}
variantFilter { variant ->
def names = variant.flavors*.name
if (names.contains("fakeData") && variant.buildType.name == "release") {
variant.ignore = true
}
}
}
With the configuration above, your project will have only three variants:
realDataDebug
realDataRelease
fakeDataDebug

You can't stop the Android plugin from creating the matrix of all builds, but you can cause the build to fail if it's not valid. For example, if you don't want Flavor2 Debug builds to work, you can stop them like this:
afterEvaluate {
tasks['prepareFlavor2DebugDependencies'].doFirst {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("This project is not valid")
}
}

Android Studio + Gradle to create different configurations

I am using Android Studio and Gradle to build Android applications. I would like to have different strings within the Java code based on which type of build it is (debug vs. release). What is the best way to do this?
For example - I want to have different URLs if I am in debug or release. Also, I want to specify different GUIDs and other keys / strings.
The obvious hacky way to do this is to do a search and replace of a string in AndroidManifest.xml or worse yet, in a Java file. This approach seems error prone and hacky to me - is there a better way to do this?

There are many ways you can do this, although I usually do
android {
buildTypes {
release {
buildConfigField("String", "URL", "your_url_on_release")
}
debug {
buildConfigField("String", "URL", "your_url_on_debug")
}
}
}
You then can access them on your java code by using:
BuildConfig.URL
You can test this using Android Studio Build Variants, by changing your application variant to debug or release ( e.g. http://prntscr.com/8waxkw)

You have many solutions to do this, here's a simple case:
buildTypes {
debug { ... }
release { ... }
}
productFlavors {
staging { ... }
production { ... }
}
build types are for build management proguarding, debugging, signing, etc.
productFlavors are for all app internal configuration.
If you want to add resources related to the flavours you can create and add to src/(flavor_name)/res/values/ folder your urls.xml config file.
With this, in android studio, you'll directly see, all the builds variants in the corresponding window and the right urls.xml file associated to the current context and leave the gradle config clean.
Of course, this method works also for any resource you would need in your app.
For more detail, you can read this : http://developer.android.com/tools/building/configuring-gradle.html#workBuildVariants

I would do it with product flavors as explained in this post.