How to manage different support library versions for 3rd party deps with gradle?

Question

I have a bunch of third party libs that I include in my base application. I cannot control the support library those 3rd party modules include. This makes it hard to have the same version of the android support library in my application.

I know using gradle when I can exclude certain libraries from each dependency:

compile('com.test:lib1:1.0.0') {     exclude group: 'com.android.support' } 

However there are a ton of support libraries and excluding them all for each one of my 3rd party libraries seems like overkill.

Is there a better way?

Reading this blog post: https://www.devsbedevin.net/android-understanding-gradle-dependencies-and-resolving-conflicts/

It suggests:

configurations.all {   resolutionStrategy {     preferProjectModules()   } } 

However when using that I still get a warning in Android Studio in my gradle file that there are multiple versions of the support library detected.

What do I do if my dependencies depend on different versions of the support library? In either case above I would be forcing the 3rd party libraries to use a specific version of the support library that they were not build with. Which version am I supposed to use? Latest support library? Min support library of all 3rd party dependencies?

Here is a minimal gradle file example showing pulling in 3rd party dependencies that each depend on their own version of the support library.

android {     compileSdkVersion 26     buildToolsVersion '26.0.2'      defaultConfig {         applicationId "com.example.app"         minSdkVersion 17         targetSdkVersion 25     } }  configurations.all {     resolutionStrategy {         preferProjectModules()     } }  dependencies {     compile 'com.android.support:support-v13:26.0.0'     compile 'com.test:lib1:1.0' // depends on support-v13:25.0.0     compile 'com.test:lib2:1.0' // depends on support-v13:25.2.0     compile 'com.test:lib3:1.0' // depends on support-v13:25.4.0     compile 'com.test:lib4:1.0' // depends on support-v13:26.0.0 } 

Android studio gives the following warning:

Answer 1

This is certainly possible. In your projects build.gradle file (the top level build.gradle file) add the following code block:

ext {     supportlib_version = '26.1.0'     gps_version = '11.2.0' }  //Ensure that all dependencies use the same version of the Android Support library subprojects {     project.configurations.all {         resolutionStrategy.eachDependency { details ->             if (details.requested.group == 'com.android.support'                     && !details.requested.name.contains('multidex')) {                 details.useVersion "$supportlib_version"             }             if (details.requested.group == 'com.google.android.gms'                     && !details.requested.name.contains('multidex')) {                 details.useVersion "$gps_version"             }         }     } } 

The following code ensures that the 'com.android.support' dependency version will be equal to $supportlib_version for all dependencies. The same for the 'com.google.android.gms' framework.

Make sure that in your module's build.gradle file you also use these versions for your dependencies. E.g.:

compile "com.android.support:support-v4:$supportlib_version" 

Read more about forcing a certain dependency version in the Official Gradle documentation.

Update Google has decoupled library versions. Therefore, forcing a specific version above 15.0.0 may not work. Instead, you can allow a limited range of versions. The example below allows any version higher than 15.0.0 but lower than 16.

gps_version = '[15.0.0, 16.0.0)'