How can I access the dependencies of an application from within the build file of a dependency embedded in the application?

Question

I have a Gradle-based library that is imported as a dependency into consuming applications. In other words, an application that consumes my library will have a build.gradle file with a list of dependencies that includes both my library as well as any other dependencies they wish to import.

From within my library's build.gradle file, I need to write a Gradle task that can access the full set of dependencies declared by the consuming application. In theory, this should be pretty straightforward, but hours of searching has not yielded a working solution yet.

The closest I've come is to follow this example and define an additional task in the library's build.gradle file that runs after the library is built:

build {
    doLast {
        project.getConfigurations().getByName('runtime')
                .resolvedConfiguration
                .firstLevelModuleDependencies
                .each { println(it.name) }
    }
}

I keep getting an error message that the 'runtime' configuration (passed into getByName and referenced in the Gradle forum post I linked) cannot be found. I have tried other common Gradle configurations that I can think of, but I never get any dependencies back from this code.

So: what is the best way to access the full set of dependencies declared by a consuming application from within the build file of one of those dependencies?

Answer 1

Okay, I mostly figured it out. The code snippet is essentially correct, but the configuration I should have been accessing was 'compileClasspath' or 'runtimeClasspath', not 'runtime'. This page helped me understand the configuration I was looking for.

The final build task in the library looks roughly like this:

build {
    doLast {
        // ...
        def deps = project.getConfigurations().getByName('compileClasspath')
                .resolvedConfiguration
                .firstLevelModuleDependencies
                .each {
                    // it.name will give you the dependency in the standard Gradle format (e.g."org.springframework.boot:spring-boot:1.5.22.RELEASE")
                }
    }
}