local-aar

Localize your android library module using AAR and define which module to use during your app development.

Why Localize library module

After android projects grew bigger and implement modularization, there's certain issue that rises with it. By implementing localization, you can improve gradle build time as you're not really using the library module but the published version of it as aar.

That's basically like telling gradle to leave your library module as-is and don't run anything on it when building apk, or even just trying to run your app.

Requirement

Before using this gradle script, your library modules need to:

• Doesn't have any maven publication configuration
• Have a debug build variant

Implementation

Follow this steps to start using this gradle scripts:

• Adding scripts to all library modules
• Configuration consumer modules
• settings.gradle configuration
• Publish library modules
• local.properties configuration

Adding scripts to all library modules

You may have more than one library modules in your project, add this line in all your library modules's build.gradle:

apply from: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telkomdev/local-aar/main/publish.gradle'

Configuration consumer modules

Your app module or even your modules now might use the localized AAR, add this line to all your aar consumer's build.gradle:

apply from: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telkomdev/local-aar/main/local-aar.gradle'

Then change your library module declaration from:

implementation project(':library-a')

To this:

implementation modulePath(':library-a')

settings.gradle configuration

In your project's settings.gradle, we will define ability to swap certain module during development. Configure it like this:

// Add gradle script
apply from: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telkomdev/local-aar/main/local-aar.gradle'

rootProject.name = 'SampleApp'
include ':app'

// For your library modules, use includeIfEnabled
includeIfEnabled(':library-a')
includeIfEnabled(':library-b')
includeIfEnabled(':feature-a')

Publish library modules

Before start developing, you'll have to publish all your library modules first as aar. Do that by running this command:

gradlew publish

If build successful, you should see mavenLocal folder in your root directory.

You might want to add mavenLocal folder inside your .gitignore file.

local.properties configuration

We'll be using local.properties to define does you want to run your app with library module as AAR and what module you want to work with right now. Add this variable:

// Build with AAR?
useAAR=true

// Modules you're working with right now, separated by space
modules=:app :some-modules-a :some-modules-b

Gradle sync, and that's it!

Reference

How We Improved Performance and Build Times in Android Studio