How can Variant Outputs be manipulated using the Android Gradle Plugin 3.0.0+?

Question

The latest version (3.0.0) of the Android Plugin for Gradle has broken its API for manipulating Variant Outputs. This API was used for manipulating files creating during builds (such as AndroidManifest.xml), and has been removed to improve configuration times.

What new APIs are available to manipulate Variant Outputs, and how do they differ to the 2.X APIs?

Answer 1

The changes to outputFiles has now been documented on the Android Developer site.

Essentially, instead of accessing the outputFile directly from the gradle API, the recommendation is to access the directory containing the file instead. The snippet below demonstrates this with a manifest file, but can be applied to other outputFiles as well.

android.applicationVariants.all { variant ->
    variant.outputs.all { output ->
        output.processManifest.doLast {

            String manifestPath = "$manifestOutputDirectory/AndroidManifest.xml"
            def manifestContent = file(manifestPath).getText()

            // Manipulate the file as needed
        }
    }
}