🏗️ Auto Composite Build Gradle Plugin

The Auto Composite Build Gradle Plugin is designed to solve the path reference issue that arises when using Gradle's composite build feature. Typically, for a team to use a shared common logic project, all developers must clone both the common logic project and the related projects into identical file paths on their local machines. This can cause issues with path references when sharing projects via version control. The Auto Composite Build plugin eliminates this problem by allowing the use of Gradle's composite builds in a Git-compatible way.

A demonstration for the problem of Gradle's composite build:

Let's assume one computer #1 cloned project common-logic to C:\\code\common-logic and uses it in C:\\code\service1.

computer #1
└── C
    └── code
        ├── common-logic
        └── service1

So C:\\code\service1 will have the line of include("../common-logic") or include("C:\\code\common-logic") on settings.gradle.
Another had the following hierarchy.

computer #2
└── C
    ├── my-code
    │   └── common-logic
    └── service1

So C:\\service1 will need to have the line of include("../my-code/common-logic") or include("C:\\my-code\common-logic") on settings.gradle.
In both declarations, if the settings.gradle file will get uploaded to Git, the Gradle's composite build feature will break.

How Auto Composite Build solved this?

The Auto Composite Build plugin registers common-logic to a global file inside the user's home. Projects can query the module from the file, and it doesn't matter the structure of the projects on the developer's computer.

computer #1
└── C
    ├── my-code
    │   └── common-logic
    ├── service1
    └── Users
        └── OurExampleUser
            └── .auto-composite-build
                └── git.details

Usage

Auto Composite build has compiled with JDK 1.8 for backward compatibility.

Kotlin DSL

In the kotlin-based settings.gradle.kts:

plugins {
    id ("io.github.almogtavor.auto-composite-build") version "1.1.0"
}

autoCompositeBuild {
    autoIncludeBuilds("my-first-app", "my-second-app")
}

Groovy DSL

In the groovy-based settings.gradle:

plugins {
    id "io.github.almogtavor.auto-composite-build" version "1.1.0"
}

autoCompositeBuild {
    autoIncludeBuilds("my-first-app", "my-second-app")
}

Available Tasks

• ./gradlew addRepoToGitDetails - Adds the current repository to the local .auto-composite-build folder.
  You should run this task for every project you'd like to include as composite build. This task will run automatically when configuring the Auto Composite Build plugin.
• ./gradlew includeModulesAsCompositeBuilds - This task generates the composite-build.gradle or composite-build.gradle.kts that holds the paths for the modules that should be included.
  This task must run only after addRepoToGitDetails run in all the modules that you've configured to include. This task will run automatically when configuring the Auto Composite Build plugin.
• ./gradlew deleteGitDetails - Should not be used. This was implemented only for edge cases. This task deletes the git.details file (and warns before).

Limitations

In case of moving the path of the repository of a module that is included as a composite build, the plugin will throw an error. To get away with this you should rerun the ./gradlew addRepoToGitDetails task. In edge cases there's a ./gradlew deleteGitDetails task which will allow you to delete your local's git.details file.

Auto composite build assumes you can add the plugin to the to-be-included project, too. If you can't, you can go to the git.details and add the to-be-included project's path manually.

Alternatives

There are two relevant alternatives on this subject, that tries to solve a similar problem at the area of Gradle's composite builds. These are:

• includegit-gradle-plugin - which enables to reference a git repository and a local directory to scan.
• includeme which will automatically scan the upper directory, of go to further levels if specified. Both of these won't let you upload the project to Git when some each user of it places it on another path. Auto composite build tries to solve this by assuming you will already clone the to-be-included project, and that you can add this plugin to it too. And as said, if not, you can always go to the git.details and add its path manually.