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 call them FlavorA and FlavorB. I would like to set it up so that FlavorA is the parent of FlavorB, that way FlavorB can just override a few resources of FlavorA, and then FlavorA overrides a bunch of resources from main. Is there a way to set up a flavor hierarchy such as this? Right now I need to duplicate lots of resources between the two in order for it to work and I would like to eliminate that duplication.

edit: OK. I've had a couple answers so far (both deleted) that were not related to my question so let me clarify. This does not have to do with Java OOP, I already know that quite well. :)

The issue I'm having is that I have a free/paid version of my app, and then several white labels that only include theme changes. The paid version only changes a few assets from the free version (apart from code changes). This is what my productFlavors look like:

productFlavors {
        whiteLabelA {
            applicationId "com.whiteLabelA.android"
        }

        whiteLabelB {
            applicationId "com.whiteLabelB.android"
        }

        mainFree {
            applicationId "com.mainFree.android"
        }

        mainPaid {
            applicationId "com.mainFree.android.paid"
        }
    }

I would like mainPaid to override mainFree since it only changes a few resources. I would like to do it this way rather than a free/paid build type because the white labels don't have paid versions, and it would be easier to have a flavor hierarchy like:

mainPaid extends mainFree {
    applicationId "com.mainFree.android.paid"
}

@SeanBarbeau Kind of. There's no answer yet as to whether flavors can be extended or not. I was able to solve my problem in a way that didn't require extending flavors so I left the question open. FYI, I solved my problem by putting my mainFree flavor resources in my main resources folder, since I realized that it should be the default build anyways. — telkins, Aug 18 '14 at 21:18
Build types have an `initWith` command that allows duplication of a gradle configuration block (though the dependent build type will still need its own source sets), but as far as I am aware, there is no equivalent for flavors. — stkent, Jan 12 '15 at 16:45
here is a link with some tips to have this behaviour. I need exactly the same but find no solution until now : https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=fr#!topic/adt-dev/f2I9LQIogOM — Tobliug, Nov 03 '15 at 23:20

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

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.

Good answer which shows how to handle inheritance of code, but for handling inheritance of **dependencies**, see my answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45579298/android-gradle-sharing-dependencies-between-product-flavors/54745210#54745210 — Jonathan Ellis, Feb 18 '19 at 10:42

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '16 at 01:56

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.

Inside product flavors block, it is just `dimension` and not `flavorDimension ` — Rémi Latapy, Oct 19 '21 at 15:28

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 24 '15 at 16:27

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.

Have a product flavor be a child of another

3 Answers3

Linked