Develop Reference

Is there any way to skip the assemble task and its dependencies in Android?

I am attempting to build a cache of APKs locally. The idea is that when you run any assemble type task, it will check locally for a previously built APK and move it into the build output folder.
I have made my own custom task that does this APK cache check. The signature is below:
tasks.register('apkCacheCheck') {
// checks for some criteria here
}
I have also made the assembleDebug task dependent on it:
tasks.whenTaskAdded{ task ->
if (task.name == "assembleDebug") {
task.dependsOn "apkCacheCheck"
task.enabled = foo // some output of apkCacheCheck
}
}
Problem:
When running assembleDebug to build an Android app, it will go up the graph and execute all its dependent tasks. However, I wanted to write a check that prevents the app from building anything until the check is finished. This way, we can save time by installing the cached APK rather than re-building it from scratch.
Questions:
Is there a way to stop all of the build tasks if said condition is met?
Is this a valid use case of Gradle or should I be looking towards running this as a Bash script?

Generated code stays in build folder after Android Studio Build

I am using a gradle task to generate some code for my API and store this code into the build folder. When I am building my application the process deletes the build folder.
Is there a way to call my code generation task between the folder deletion and the start of the compilation?

I am not a Gradle expert, so their might be better answers!
In your build.gradle you can create custom tasks and make them depend on other tasks:
// this is your new task
task generateCode() {
description 'Generates some code...'
doLast {
println("generateCode")
// do your code generation here
}
}
// put the name of the task you wanna depend on, like: compileSources
project.task("compileSources").dependsOn generateCode
When you call this task ./gradlew compileSources you should see that the custom task generateCode gets executed first.

After allot of trying , i found the solution .
In the build.gradle i had to add the preBuild.finalizedBy(generateCode)

gradle copy as doLast not working

I am trying to do a very simple thing. As gradle removes all files in the build dir when cleaning I want to move the apks somewhere else when creating release versions. So I added a copy task into the chain and I set it to be the last. Anything I tried did't work. So I simplified it and added some logging to make a point. I think it just doesn't work.
Using two variables, I can check that at task definition time and execution time the input and output paths are valid. I can also check that the task is executed. I put some more files in the input directory to make sure there is also something there in any case. This is the script:
def buildPath
def outPath
task copyApks(type: Copy) {
buildPath = "$buildDir\\outputs\\apk"
outPath ="$buildDir\\outputs\\apk2"
logger.error("Source Folder is $buildPath")
logger.error("Destination Folder is $outPath")
from buildPath
into outPath
}
assembleRelease.doLast {
android.applicationVariants.all { variant ->
println "Variant $variant.name"
logger.error("Source Folder is $buildPath")
logger.error("Destination Folder is $outPath")
copyApks
}
}
And this is the output, where one can see that the paths are correct (they exist and are valid) both at definition and execution time. Also one can see that the task is executed:
What is wrong?
Executing external task 'assembleRelease'...
Parallel execution with configuration on demand is an incubating feature.
Source Folder is C:\Users\Administrator\Projects\Gradle\MB6\app\build\outputs\apk
Destination Folder is C:\Users\Administrator\Projects\Gradle\MB6\app\build\outputs\apk2
................
some other gradle logs
................
:app:assembleRelease
Variant debug
Source Folder is C:\Users\Administrator\Projects\Gradle\MB6\app\build\outputs\apk
Destination Folder is C:\Users\Administrator\Projects\Gradle\MB6\app\build\outputs\apk2
Variant release
Source Folder is C:\Users\Administrator\Projects\Gradle\MB6\app\build\outputs\apk
Destination Folder is C:\Users\Administrator\Projects\Gradle\MB6\app\build\outputs\apk2
BUILD SUCCESSFUL

First of all, you have to know, that just adding the task name into your closure, in your case it's copyApks, doesn't really mean that this task should be executed. It's just the same, as you specified a variable, but do nothing with it.
And one more, note, the both variants paths are the same, that means that you are trying to copy tha same files twice. Actually, that not the only reason, you have to understand, that your copy task is configured yet in the configuration phase, when you are trying to call it during the execution phase, so you can't change it's from and into parameters, and this task will always behave the same.
If you want to call some tasks one after another, you have a number of choices, like task dependencies, task finalization or task ordering. You can read about it in the official user guide. There is a way to call some task like a method call, but this is a very poor solution and you have to avoid using it.
So, if you want to call a copy task, then you may try solution like this
assembleRelease.finalizedBy copyApks
This will call a copy task always every time assembling is done.

Want to run a custom gradle task only when running Unit test

How to set up gradle to run a particular custom copy task, only when running unit tests?
EDIT
I want to run these tasks when i press build, i. e only in the flavor of the build with unit test execution included.

I've finally found the solution, with the help of this documentation which presents all the tasks that run during build, test, release etc. in a very concise manner. So by making tasks clean, preBuild depend on my copyTask I can ensure that the copy task is run every time the project is cleaned or built.
But since I don't want to run this during building or cleaning process but want to run it when I only run tests, I identified a task that compiles release unit test sources called the compileReleaseUnitTestSources but just mentioning it in build.gradle as
compileReleaseUnitTestSources.dependsOn(myCopyTask)
doesn't actually work, because gradle will give an error saying it cannot find the task compileReleaseUnitTestSources as for some reason that task is not available yet. Instead by enclosing it in a afterEvaluate block we can ensure that this block is executed after all tasks are evaluated, that way we have access to that task now, So finally I added this to my build.gradle
afterEvaluate {
compileReleaseUnitTestSources.dependsOn(copyResDirectoryToClasses)
}
All the answers here mention to use the dependsOn keyword to attach my task to another task that is run during general build/test execution, but none of them mentioned how to go around the problem where gradle is not able to find the tasks even though you know for sure that these tasks were available and run during build/test execution.

you have to set up a "customCopyTask" and make the "test-task" which does the unittests depend on the "customCopyTask" like this
task customCopyTask(type: Copy) {
from sourceSets.test.resources
into sourceSets.test.output.classesDir
}
test.dependsOn customCopyTask

You can make some task finalizing another, in that case this task will run only if another one was called, right after it. This could be done as:
task runUnitTest << {
println 'running tests'
}
task copyTestResults << {
println 'copying results'
}
//make copyTestResults finalize runUnitTest
runUnitTest.finalizedBy copyTestResults
You can read about it in the official user guide.
Additionally, if your unit test could be up-to-date and you don't want to run you copy task in that case, you can check the test task status and skip copy-task, as:
task copyTestResults {
doFirst {
//chtck anothe task status and skip this one if it didn't actually work
if (!tasks.getByName("runUnitTest").getState().didWork) {
throw new StopExecutionException();
}
}
doLast{
println 'copying results'
}
}
Or, if you just need to run copy-task before unit tests, make the test task depending on copy-task by setting it's dependsOn property, read about it with a number og examples here

gradle custom task order on Android

I have 2 gradle tasks that i want to run after assembleRelease task.
task copyRequiredFilesToVersionControl(type:Copy) {
...
}
task ('versionControl') << {
...
}
If I configure order for these tasks as below tasks get never called...
copyRequiredFilesToVersionControl.dependsOn(assembleRelease)
versionControl.dependsOn(copyRequiredFilesToVersionControl)
If i change order like;
assembleRelease.dependsOn(copyRequiredFilesToVersionControl)
versionControl.dependsOn(copyRequiredFilesToVersionControl)
Tasks are run at the beginning of document. So there is no file to copy and add to version control.
What is the best approach?

I have found method that called doLast. So i fixed my problem with it.
assembleRelease {
doLast {
tasks.versionControl.execute()
}
}

The best approach that I've found to date, has been to use the Ordering Tasks feature in Gradle : see http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/more_about_tasks.html for more documentation, currently section 15.5.
Basically, you have two rules available : MUST run after and SHOULD run after. I like the rule quite a bit, I use this to create zip archives of projects automatically. NOTE : you must still make use of the "dependsOn" to get proper execution if tasks that you need to have run in a particular order.