Gradle and Android support library

Question

In almost every Android app we need a couple of library projects like ABS, HoloEverywhere, etc. Most of these are in Maven Central, which is good. What is bad is, most of them depend on the support library and naturally point to the outdated (I mean very buggy) version in Maven Central.

We are currently maintain our own repositories with custom versions of Android (using the Maven Android SDK deployer) and each library (fetched from git and with adjusted maven dependency). Will there be an easier way of doing this, using the new Gradle based build system (like overwriting dependencies of aar projects)?

Answer 1

We will provide artifact versions of the support libraries. Stay tuned.

Edit: The artifacts are now available. You have to download "Android Support Repository" in your SDK. The gradle build system will automatically use this as a local Maven repository.

There are 3 artifacts in it right now:

com.android.support:support-v4:21.0.0
com.android.support:support-v13:21.0.0
com.android.support:gridlayout-v7:21.0.0
com.android.support:appcompat-v7:21.0.0

Answer 2

apply plugin: 'android-library'

dependencies {
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:21.0.0'
}