How to define repositories for all subprojects in Gradle

Question

I am writing Gradle scripts to build a lot of projects. They are using the same repositories so I would like to define repositories for all of my sub-projects instead of defining in each of them. So I try to move the repositories definition from the build.gradle in an individual project into the build.gradle in their parent folder.

subprojects{
    repositories{
        mavenCentral()
        flatDir{
            name 'uploadRepository'
            dirs '../../sharedlib'
        }
    }
}

However, the sub-projects can't find the repository definition at all. Moving other configurations in subprojects closure work. I've tried dependencies and properties configuration. They all work with no problem. I don't know why repositories work differently. When Googling, I can't find any example of putting repositories inside subprojects, I suspect I am doing it the wrong way. Please tell me what's wrong. Thanks!

Answer 1

I finally figured out what the problem was. Originally, I missed the settings.gradle in the parent folder. (I don't know why dependencies configuration works even without this file) After I put that in, the sub-projects could find the repositories, but the dependencies and an one property (sourceCompatibility=1.5) I defined in the parent project no longer works. I have to move the apply plugin:'war' from the subproject's build.gradle to the parent's subprojects{...} I figure that's because the dependencies and sourceCompatibility are things provided by the plugin. And somehow Gradle doesn't look into the subproject's script to find the plugin first.