Have a product flavor be a child of another

Question

I\'m setting up the product flavors in my app and have run into one problem. Two of my product flavors are very similar to each other and only differ by a few resources, let\'s

Answer 1

I think you won't be able to do this in the android object directly, but you can use a configuration function to set common properties on a flavor. Put this after the android object:

void configureWhiteLabelFlavor(flavor) {
    flavor.useJack = true
}

configureWhiteLabelFlavor(android.productFlavors.whiteLabelA)

If needed, you can implement deep inheritance by calling other functions from this function.

Answer 2

I found two solutions:

1. Use flavor dimensions.

android {
  ...
  flavorDimensions 'palette', 'color'

  productFlavors {
    blackAndWhite {
      dimension 'palette'
    }
    redAndWhite {
      dimension 'palette'
    }
    red {
      dimension 'color'
    }
    white {
      dimension 'color'
    }
  }
  variantFilter { variant ->
    def first = variant.getFlavors().get(0).name
    def second = variant.getFlavors().get(1).name
    if(!(first.equals('blackAndWhite') && second.equals('white')) ||
       !(first.equals('redAndWhite') && (second.equals('white') || second.equals('red')))) {
       variant.setIgnore(true);
    }
  }
  ...
}

Because of variantFilter we have 3 combinations instead of 4:

blackAndWhite => white

redAndWhite   => white
              => red

You can consider that as red extending redAndWhite and white extending blackAndWhite or redAndWhite.

This answer and variant filter documentation were helpful.

2. Edit source set.

productFlavors{
    flavor1 {
    }
    flavor2 {
    }
}

sourceSets {
    flavor2 {
        java.srcDirs = sourceSets.flavor1.java.srcDirs
        res.srcDirs = sourceSets.flavor1.res.srcDirs
        resources.srcDirs = sourceSets.flavor1.resources.srcDirs
        aidl.srcDirs = sourceSets.flavor1.aidl.srcDirs
        renderscript.srcDirs = sourceSets.flavor1.renderscript.srcDirs
        assets.srcDirs = sourceSets.flavor1.assets.srcDirs
    }
}

Code example was shamelessly copied from this blog post. Big thanks to its author.

Answer 3

I was looking for a similar thing in gradle and found Multi-flavor variants. I have an app that should have versions A and B, and each version has dev and pro environments, so I ended up with this in my gradle:

flavorDimensions 'app', 'environment'

productFlavors {
    versionA {
        flavorDimension 'app'
    }
    versionB {
        flavorDimension 'app'
    }
    pre {
        flavorDimension 'environment'
    }
    pro {
        flavorDimension 'environment'
    }
}

And in my build variants I have versionAPreDebug, versionAPreRelease, versionBPreDebug, versionBPreRelease, etc. I think what you need is something like that.