In Android/Gradle how to define a task that only runs when building specific buildType/buildVariant/productFlavor (v0.10+)

Question

Android Plugin for Gradle generates for every BuilType/Flavor/BuildVariant a task. The problem is that this task will be generated dynamically and thus won't be available as a dependency when defining a task like this:

task myTaskOnlyForDebugBuildType(dependsOn:assembleDebug) {     //do smth } 

A proposed workaround from this answer would be this

task myTaskOnlyForDebugBuildType(dependsOn:"assembleDebug") {     //do smth } 

or this

afterEvaluate {     task myTaskOnlyForDebugBuildType(dependsOn:assembleDebug) {         //do smth     } } 

But both didn't work for me.

Answer 1

Here is a full example on how to do this inspired by this post: (android plugin v.0.9.2 and gradle 1.11 at the time of writing)

We are going to define a task that only runs when we build a "debugCustomBuildType"

android {     ...     buildTypes {         debugCustomBuildType {             //config         }    } } 

Define the task that should only be executed on a specific builtType/variant/flavor

task doSomethingOnWhenBuildDebugCustom {     doLast {        //task action     } } 

Dynamically set the dependency when the tasks are added by gradle

tasks.whenTaskAdded { task ->     if (task.name == 'generateDebugCustomBuildTypeBuildConfig') {         task.dependsOn doSomethingOnWhenBuildDebugCustom      } } 

Here we use the "generateBuildConfig" task, but you can use any task that works for you (also see official docs)

• processManifest
• aidlCompile
• renderscriptCompile
• mergeResourcess.
• mergeAssets
• processResources
• generateBuildConfig
• javaCompile
• processJavaResources
• assemble

Don't forget to use the buildTypeSpecific task (generateBuildConfig vs. generateDebugCustomBuildTypeBuildConfig)

And that's it. It's a shame this workaround isn't well documented because for me this seems like one of the simplest requirements for a build script.

Answer 2

I achieved it like this:

android {     ext.addDependency = {         task, flavor, dependency ->             def taskName = task.name.toLowerCase(Locale.US)             if (taskName.indexOf(flavor.toLowerCase(Locale.US)) >= 0) {                 task.dependsOn dependency             }     }      productFlavors {         production {         }         other     }      task theProductionTask << {         println('only in production')     }      tasks.withType(JavaCompile) {         compileTask -> addDependency compileTask, "production", theProductionTask     } } 

To be frank, I don't which locale is used to generate names for compile taks so toLowerCase(Locale.US) may be counterproductive.