Gradle: How do you include your own library as part of build? - gradle

Question

I have a commons gradle project which is a shared library for all my other projects.
In the build.gradle of dependent project, I included the commons jar as following:
dependencies {
...
runtime files('../commons/build/libs/commons-1.0.jar')
}
And this builds fine with the relative path. But this feels like hard-coding a specific library. What is the standard way to achieve the builds in this case?

Answer 1

You can publish the common jar to Your local maven repository. But If You are developing with in a team, You should publish to a repository manager where other parties have also access to.
And in the dependent projects You simply add this common jar, like You are adding a third party library. With this way You don't have to store dependent jar files on Your version control system. When projects are developed by different parties, this way would be more convenient.
Example of using mavenlocal
// Common project build.gradle
apply plugin: 'maven-publish'
version = '2.0'
...
publishing {
publications {
maven(MavenPublication) {
groupId = 'com.gradle.sample'
artifactId = 'project1-sample'
from components.java
}
}
}
You can use gradle publishToMavenLocal to publish common project to mavenlocal. (Dependent projects can not use the new versions of common jar, unless You publish it to mavenlocal in this case)
// Dependent project build.gradle
repositories {
mavenLocal()
}
dependencies {
implementation 'com.gradle.sample:project1-sample:2.0'
....
}
Check the following link for details.
https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/publishing_maven.html