How to declare a dependency between 2 non-custom Gradle tasks - gradle

Question

I have a Gradle build in which I am publishing the output to the Maven local repo (its used by other modules of a larger non Gradle build). But doing so generates this warning:
Gradle detected a problem with the following location:
'display\build\outputs\apk\release\display-release.apk'. Reason: Task
':display:publishMavenAndroidPublicationToMavenLocal' uses this output
of task ':display:packageRelease' without declaring an explicit or
implicit dependency. This can lead to incorrect results being
produced, depending on what order the tasks are executed. Please refer
to
https://docs.gradle.org/7.2/userguide/validation_problems.html#implicit_dependency
for more details about this problem.
The link suggests that I declare a dependency between the 2 tasks.
But neither of the tasks are custom tasks, they are part of the included plugins. And I despite spending hours trying all kinds of syntax I can't work out how to declare the dependency from the publishToMavenLocal to the package task.
How do I declare it?
plugins {
id 'com.android.application'
id 'maven-publish' // So that we can publish the APKs
}
android {
...
}
publishing {
publications {
mavenAndroid(MavenPublication) {
groupId = 'com.mygroup.foo'
artifactId = project.name
version = 1.2.3'
artifact "$buildDir/outputs/apk/release/${project.name}-release.apk"
// Explicitly not generating a pom dependencies node
// 1) we don't need it because the APK includes all its deps.
on Artifactory.
}
}
}
build.finalizedBy publishToMavenLocal

Answer 1

I believe the problem stems from this line:
artifact "$buildDir/outputs/apk/release/${project.name}-release.apk"
The APK at that location is created by some task. Instead of referencing that tasks' output, you have given a direct path. Because of that, Gradle is not able to accurately deduce task dependencies.
I am not an Android developer, but judging from the error:
uses this output of task ':display:packageRelease' without declaring an explicit or implicit dependency.
The project display has a task named packageRelease which may or may not come from the Android Gradle plugin. Again, I am not an Android developer, so do not know for certain. The packageRelease is what produces the APK at the aforementioned path.
The publishMavenAndroidPublicationToMavenLocal is created when you create a publication named mavenAndroid; this is documented in the maven-publish documentation
With that said, you must declare task dependencies between the two. Something like:
tasks.withType(PublishToMavenRepository::class).configureEach {
inputFile.from(packageRelease)
}
tasks.withType(PublishToMavenLocal::class).configureEach {
inputFile.from(packageRelease)
}
Without knowing the task type of packageRelease and unfamiliarity with Android projects, best I can do above.