I am creating SDK and want to modularize it. And prevent internal APIs from being exposed on your public interface.
Want optional dependency based on features required. If features is not required we can remove dependency and code and imports should not work.
Tried Ways
- Submodule dependencies
- Fat AAR
Submodule dependencies
when a library module gets built, the .aar artifact will only include code and resources that are in the library module itself. It won’t include:
- any code or resources from database and ui-components
- links to its transitive dependencies (these go into the build.gradle)
So when the app module directly includes the library as a gradle dependency, it would crash due to missing classes from database and ui-components on its classpath.
Fat AAR
In the fat .aar solution, code and resources of the submodules are bundled into the main SDK module, hence creating a fat .aar
the fat .aar plugin breaks on almost every minor Android Gradle plugin update! This is because it hooks itself into particular tasks of the Android Gradle plugin and these very often get renamed/moved. However, the project maintainer need to do job at fixing those within a few weeks after the breaking change.
Also, because of the way fat .aar references dependencies from submodules, it can significantly increase the binary size of your SDK.
Is there any other possible solution?
