Gradle 依赖关系树中星号和箭头符号的含义

Question

I have run gradlew command to get Gradle dependencies tree :

gradlew.bat app:dependencies

On output I am getting different type of symbols attached with each dependency:

 com.twotoasters.servos:util-otto:1.0.0
 com.squareup.okhttp:okhttp:2.4.0 (*)
 com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:23.2.0 -> 25.0.0

Some dependencies are without any symbol, some are with (*) and -> .
What do these symbols mean?

I have tried to search this, but failed to find any help on this.

Answer 1

(*) stands next to the dependency, which has already been imported though other artifact, thus resulting in duplication.

At the end of the output of ./gradlew:app:dependencies you can see this:

-> stands next to the dependency, which has already been imported through other artifact, but with a newer version . Gradle will prefer the newer version.

Hence, com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:23.2.0 -> 25.0.0 would mean, that 25.0.0 version is already imported, but particularly that artifact is dependent on an older 23.2.0 version.

See explanation by Egor Andreevici from his "Making the most of your Gradle Builds" talk from Droidcon Italy 2017.

Answer 2

-> means from version 23.2.0 to 25.0.0 its useful when running gradle in offline mode so it will use the first cached version that is available (*) im not sure but i think it is for downloading and compiling all of the following library family (core,etc...) also there is + which is used instead of version code which will use the latest version that is available