Gradle: "apply plugin" at the top or at the bottom

Question

Has the same effect add the "apply plugin" at the beginning or end of the file build.gradle in Android Studio projects?

For example to add the 'com.google.gms.google-services' plugin, Firebase official documentation recommends adding at the end, but I've seen other codes add it at the beginning.

I know the question seems irrelevant, but I'm developing a plugin for Android Studio to manage dependencies and have this doubt.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Gradle scripts are interpreted top to bottom so order can be important. Keep in mind that gradle has a configuration phase and an execution phase so sometimes order isn't important. It's common to apply your plugins at the top of the script since plugins often add extension objects and tasks to the gradle model which can then be configured lower down in the build script.

For example, you can't do the following because the test task is added by the java plugin:

test {
   include 'org/foo/**'
}
apply plugin: 'java'