How to specify properties on groups of dependencies in Gradle? - build

Question

Using Gradle, I'd like to be able to disable transitivity on one group of dependencies, while still allowing on others. Something like this:
// transitivity enabled
compile(
[group: 'log4j', name: 'log4j', version: '1.2.16'],
[group: 'commons-beanutils', name: 'commons-beanutils', version: '1.7.0']
)
// transitivity disabled
compile(
[group: 'commons-collections', name: 'commons-collections', version: '3.2.1'],
[group: 'commons-lang', name: 'commons-lang', version: '2.6'],
) {
transitive = false
}
Gradle won't accept this syntax. I can get it to work if I do this:
compile(group: 'commons-collections', name: 'commons-collections', version: '3.2.1') { transitive = false }
compile(group: 'commons-lang', name: 'commons-lang', version: '2.6']) { transitive = false }
But that requires me to specify the property on each dependency, when I'd rather group them together.
Anyone have a suggestion for a syntax that will work on this?

Answer 1

First, there are ways to simplify (or at least shorten) your declarations. For example:
compile 'commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1#jar'
compile 'commons-lang:commons-lang:2.6#jar'
Or:
def nonTransitive = { transitive = false }
compile 'commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1', nonTransitive
compile 'commons-lang:commons-lang:2.6', nonTransitive
In order to create, configure, and add multiple dependencies at once, you'll have to introduce a little abstraction. Something like:
def deps(String... notations, Closure config) {
def deps = notations.collect { project.dependencies.create(it) }
project.configure(deps, config)
}
dependencies {
compile deps('commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1',
'commons-lang:commons-lang:2.6') {
transitive = false
}
}

Answer 2

Create separate configurations, and have transitive = false on the desired configuration.
In the dependencies, simply include configurations into compile or any other configuration they belong to
configurations {
apache
log {
transitive = false
visible = false //mark them private configuration if you need to
}
}
dependencies {
apache 'commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1'
log 'log4j:log4j:1.2.16'
compile configurations.apache
compile configurations.log
}
The above lets me disable the transitive dependencies for log related resources while I have the default transitive = true applied for apache configuration.
Edited Below as per tair's comment:
would this fix?
//just to show all configurations and setting transtivity to false
configurations.all.each { config->
config.transitive = true
println config.name + ' ' + config.transitive
}
and run
gradle dependencies
to view the dependencies. I am using Gradle-1.0 and it behaves ok as far as showing the dependencies is concerned, when using both transitive false and true.
I have an active project where when turning transitive to true using above method, I have 75 dependencies and I have 64 when transitive to false.
worth doing a similar check with and check the build artifacts.