On Android support lib dependencies

Question

It just occured to me why we add android support lib dependencies as remote dependencies to the compilation path in gradle scripts ? I mean we already have them installed on our local. So wouldn't it be more meaningful to declare them as local dependencies (ie: compile fileTree ... ). Or am I missing some important stuff ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Adding compile "com.example.library:something:1.2.5" to your gradle dependencies does not necessarily have to mean that this library needs to be taken from a remote source. It just means that your project relies on ( depends on) this library.

During gradle sync, different sources (including local ones, caches, remote repositories, etc.) are searched to find the desired dependency.