DEV Community: Victor Rattis

Tip: How to avoid duplicating Gradle codes in Multi Android modules

Victor Rattis — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:07:42 +0000

Let's assume the following code is added in more than one Android Gradle module on a project which has multiple Gradle modules.

android {
    compileSdkVersion 30
    buildToolsVersion "30.0.3"

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 16
        targetSdkVersion 30
    }

    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }

    kotlinOptions {
        jvmTarget = '1.8'
    }
}

To avoid duplicating this code in more than one module Gradle and avoid making mistakes, you could use the following solution:

Create a Gradle Script file in the root project, and for this code, you could create for example android.gradle and add the code common in it:

android {
    compileSdkVersion 30
    buildToolsVersion "30.0.3"

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 16
        targetSdkVersion 30
    }

    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }

    kotlinOptions {
        jvmTarget = '1.8'
    }
}

and in build.gradle of each Gradle module you can include it using apply from:'../android.gradle'. For example, including it into app/build.gradle.

apply from:'../android.gradle'

android {
    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.my.application"
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"
        testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    }

    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
}

The Price of using AndroidX.

Victor Rattis — Tue, 19 May 2020 01:53:27 +0000

Currently, It is recommended by Google to use AndroidX in our project to make it compatible with many Android versions.

"AndroidX is a major improvement to the original Android Support Library, which is no longer maintained. androidx packages fully replace the Support Library by providing feature parity and new libraries." (link)

Is there a price for that? Let's consider the following points...

Simple Hello World with 'androidx"

APK Size: 1.6 MB;
AndroidX Size has ~1.5 MB;
It has >10K methods (remembering in enabling the multi-dex if your app exceeds over 64K methods).

Simple Hello world without 'androidx'

APK Size has 102.7 KB.

Keep in mind: A dependency always has a price in a project and I think this should be taken into consideration before using it.

Just think about!

Good Practices: Can I use synchronized in the Main Thread of an Android application?

Victor Rattis — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 14:52:31 +0000