Gradle 依赖管理：如何在 android 项目中同时维护新旧版本的依赖？

Question

I am faced with a situation currently in one of my android projects.

Situation is:

Project uses libraries A and B(new version). Also library A depends on library B(old version) as well. Both A and B are maintained independently and their release cannot be synced.

The versions of library B old and new are incompatible in the sense that some interface definitions have changed in the new version. This I think will create some problem while building the project.

What is the best way to maintain both A and B in my android project?

Answer 1

As already stated in the comments there is no out-of-the-box solution for your problem and your best option probably is to make your project use the same old version of library B that is used by library A.

Only if you really depend on features or fixes that are only available in the new version of B you could try to use the shadow plugin to build your own version of library B with relocated packages. That is:

• Create a new project eg custom-b with the new version of B as dependency
• Apply the shadow-plugin and relocate the classes of B to another package. For example package com.library.b could become custom-b.com.library.b
• Publish the shadow-jar of the custom-b project locally and make your main project depend on this jar

This way the classes of the new version of B will be available under a different package and could be used by your code.

As stated above you should only try this if you really depend on the new version of B as this introduces some considerable amount of additional complexity which should be avoided if not absolutely necessary. Alternatively you could of course also ask the developers of A if they are planning to use the new version of B in one of their coming releases. This might solve your problem as well.