Gradle dependency on module of another project failing - gradle

Question

I realize there are a lot of posts online regarding Gradle setup. That being said, I have researched heavily and not found exactly what I'm looking for, or I'm using incorrect terms to do so. I'm using Gradle version 3.3.
So I've got multiple Gradle projects, each of which is maintained separately. There is no master Gradle project. Each projects has its own modules, build, and settings file. The structure of this is as so:
Projects
A
a1
build.gradle
a2
build.gradle
build.gradle
settings.gradle
B
b1
build.gradle
b2
build.gradle
build.gradle
settings.gradle
What I'm attempting to do is make B dependent on A's modules. Let's assume one of the modules in B is dependent on a1. In B's settings, I've done the following:
rootProject.name = 'B'
rootProject.setProjectDir(new File(".")
include 'a1'
project(':a1').setProjectDir(new File(settingsDir.getParentFile(), "/A/a1"))
The way I'm storing version numbers is through each project's build.gradle file in the ext closure. I then access them through the project. Here's how B's build file looks:
ext {
freemarkerVersion = '2.3.19'
}
dependencies {
compile project(':a1')
compile group: 'org.freemarker', name: 'freemarker', version: rootProject.properties.get('freemarkerVersion')
}
What I'm seeing is B is able to resolve its dependencies and is attempting to compile project a1, but it is using B's version numbers instead of A's. I verified this by putting a common dependency in both projects with different version numbers. The dependency showed up using B's version. I also changed the version number in B and further confirmed this. So if I could get any help for using project-appropriate versions in each of their own build.gradle files, that would be great!
EDIT: Updated post, figured out previous problem was from relative path not resolving.

Answer 1

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm posting the solution I came up with, as I had no other answers knocking down my door.
The first thing I did was moved all of my version properties to an external gradle.properties file, instead of in an ext closure in the project's build.gradle file. Doing this, the project will load the properties file by default when compiled from its own context. It will of course be overridden from the user.home gradle.properties file, so keep this in mind. Example gradle.properties:
a_freemarkerVersion = 2.3.19
When using one project's modules from another project, you'll need a way to separately link the two so Gradle can resolve the dependency's properties. I achieved this by defining a method to load in the desired project's properties file. This method looks like so:
def addConfig(String parent, String filename) {
Properties props = new Properties()
props.load(new FileInputStream(new File(project.projectDir.getParent(), "/${parent}/${filename}")))
props.each { prop ->
project.ext.set(prop.key, prop.value)
}
}
addConfig("A", "gradle.properties")
All this method does is goes up one directory, goes into the project specified, and retrieves its gradle.properties file and loads these variables into the current project's properties. With that being said, there's one thing to note here: if you define the same variable in both, one of them will be overridden. To avoid this, I just prefixed all variables with the project name and then an underscore. This will guarantee they'll never conflict with one another.
I accessed the variables in all projects with this syntax:
dependencies {
compile group: 'org.freemarker', name: 'freemarker', version: "${a_freemarkerVersion}"
}
The rest of the setup is the same as I defined in my initial post. Just make sure to include the dependent module, specify its project directory, and compile that project from within the project's dependencies.