How to specify properties on groups of dependencies in Gradle?

Question

Using Gradle, I'd like to be able to disable transitivity on one group of dependencies, while still allowing on others. Something like this:

// transitivity enabled
compile(
  [group: 'log4j', name: 'log4j', version: '1.2.16'],
  [group: 'commons-beanutils', name: 'commons-beanutils', version: '1.7.0']
)

// transitivity disabled
compile(
  [group: 'commons-collections', name: 'commons-collections', version: '3.2.1'],
  [group: 'commons-lang', name: 'commons-lang', version: '2.6'],
) { 
  transitive = false
}

Gradle won't accept this syntax. I can get it to work if I do this:

compile(group: 'commons-collections', name: 'commons-collections', version: '3.2.1') { transitive = false }
compile(group: 'commons-lang', name: 'commons-lang', version: '2.6']) { transitive = false }

But that requires me to specify the property on each dependency, when I'd rather group them together.

Anyone have a suggestion for a syntax that will work on this?

Answer 1

First, there are ways to simplify (or at least shorten) your declarations. For example:

compile 'commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1@jar'
compile 'commons-lang:commons-lang:2.6@jar'

Or:

def nonTransitive = { transitive = false }

compile 'commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1', nonTransitive
compile 'commons-lang:commons-lang:2.6', nonTransitive

In order to create, configure, and add multiple dependencies at once, you'll have to introduce a little abstraction. Something like:

def deps(String... notations, Closure config) { 
    def deps = notations.collect { project.dependencies.create(it) }
    project.configure(deps, config)
}

dependencies {
    compile deps('commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1', 
            'commons-lang:commons-lang:2.6') { 
        transitive = false
    }
}

Answer 2

Create separate configurations, and have transitive = false on the desired configuration. In the dependencies, simply include configurations into compile or any other configuration they belong to

configurations {
    apache
    log {
        transitive = false
        visible = false //mark them private configuration if you need to
    }
}

dependencies {
    apache 'commons-collections:commons-collections:3.2.1'
    log 'log4j:log4j:1.2.16'

    compile configurations.apache
    compile configurations.log
}

The above lets me disable the transitive dependencies for log related resources while I have the default transitive = true applied for apache configuration.

Edited Below as per tair's comment:

would this fix?

//just to show all configurations and setting transtivity to false
configurations.all.each { config->
    config.transitive = true
    println config.name + ' ' + config.transitive
}

and run gradle dependencies

to view the dependencies. I am using Gradle-1.0 and it behaves ok as far as showing the dependencies is concerned, when using both transitive false and true.

I have an active project where when turning transitive to true using above method, I have 75 dependencies and I have 64 when transitive to false.

worth doing a similar check with and check the build artifacts.