Create testing Android apk using gradle build system

Question

I'm migrating my android project to gradle build system and I can't import my Android project from my Integration Test Android project.

I'm using multi-project configuration with several android-libraries and it's working great, but I'm having a problem setting up my testing project with multi-project settings. For external reasons I need to continue using this structure.

MyProject/
 | settings.gradle
 + MyApp/
    | build.gradle
    | src
    | res
    | libs
 + Instrumentation-Tests/
    | build.gradle
    | src
    | res
    | libs

my current configuration files look like:

settings.gradle:

include ':MyApp', 'Instrumentation-Tests'

MyAppp/build.gradle:

apply plugin: 'android'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile files('.....jar')
    compile project('....')
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:13.0.+'
}

android {
    compileSdkVersion 17
    buildToolsVersion "17.0.0"

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 11
        targetSdkVersion 16
    }

    sourceSets {
        main {
            manifest.srcFile 'AndroidManifest.xml'
            java.srcDirs = ['src']
            resources.srcDirs = ['src']
            aidl.srcDirs = ['src']
            renderscript.srcDirs = ['src']
            res.srcDirs = ['res']
            assets.srcDirs = ['assets']
        }

    }
}

And finally my Instrumentation-Tests/build.gradle:

apply plugin: 'android'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile project(':MyApp')
    compile files('.....jar')
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:13.0.+'
}

android {
    compileSdkVersion 17
    buildToolsVersion "17.0.0"

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 11
        targetSdkVersion 16
    }

    sourceSets {
        main {
            manifest.srcFile 'AndroidManifest.xml'
            java.srcDirs = ['src']
            resources.srcDirs = ['src']
            aidl.srcDirs = ['src']
            renderscript.srcDirs = ['src']
            res.srcDirs = ['res']
            assets.srcDirs = ['assets']
        }
    }
}

When I run gradle compileDebug the project MyApp is compiled correctly (and all its modules) but the Instrumentation-Tests compilation fails because it can not find the android classes defined in MyApp.

I've read documentation and a lot of posts but I couldn't make it work, I do also tried using:

compile(project(':MyApp')) { transitive = true }

when declaring the dependency.

Has anybody had the same problem? I'd like to include the output of the MyApp project dependency into the classpath of Instrumentation-Tests compilation, but I don't know if that is possible using the android gradle plugin.

Answer 1

This won't work (as of now) because you can only specify library projects as dependencies.

So for the case of compile project(':MyApp') MyApp should have been an Android library project with apply plugin: 'android-library' in it's build.gradle. Which certainly doesn't make sense.

To have a separate test project, you need something else (which I'm researching myself).

EDIT: Given up on testing with Gradle, use Ant for that.