BuildConfig.DEBUG (or equivalent) as a constant value

Question

Assuming I have a custom annotation:

@Target(ElementType.TYPE)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.SOURCE)
public @interface Test {
    boolean type();
}

I would like for the type parameter to be different based on the build type (but that would change automatically).

So I could do something like that:

@Test(type = BuildConfig.DEBUG)
public class Example {
} 

But of course the code of the Example class won't compile because the value for the BuildConfig.DEBUG is not constant.

Anyone has any idea of creating a workaround for this? Maybe specifying some other parameters in gradle? I'm not interested in a solution that would make me manually change the type for the particular build. This way or the other. I'm looking for a way to do it automatically with the build.

Answer 1

By gradle android plugin

You can use gradle buildConfigField. For example

android {
    ...
    buildTypes {
        debug {
            buildConfigField "boolean", "TYPE", "true"
        }
        release {
            buildConfigField "boolean", "TYPE", "false"
        }
        ...
    }    
}

and then

@Test(type = BuildConfig.TYPE)
public class Example {
} 

With buildConfigField you can also add some other type to your BuildConfig.

android {
    buildTypes {
        debug {
            buildConfigField "int", "A_INT", "1"
            buildConfigField "String", "A_STRING", "\"string_1\"" // <---note the escape
        }

        release {
            buildConfigField "int", "A_INT", "2"
            buildConfigField "String", "A_STRING", "\"string_2\""
        }
    }
}

and if you have multiple flavors, you can define a field in each flavor:

productFlavors {
    // Define separate dev and prod product flavors.
    dev {
        buildConfigField "boolean", "IS_DEV", "true"
    }

    prod {
        buildConfigField "boolean", "IS_DEV", "false"
    }
}

With the same rules, you can add a value in your resources using resValue:

android {
    buildTypes {
        debug{
            resValue "string", "dev_name", "Alice"
        }

        release {
            resValue "string", "dev_name", "Bob"
        }
    }
}

By Code

You can place a Class with values under src/debug/java/your.package.name and the same Class with different values under src/release/java/your.package.name

debug version

public final class MyConfigurations {
    public static final boolean TYPE = true;
    ...
}

release version

public final class MyConfigurations {
    public static final boolean TYPE = false;
    ...
}

And you can also play with flavors with the same logic of android gradle plugin (and in fact also this solution depends by that plugin)