Not able to remove transitive dependency from gradle in an Android Project

Question

I am trying to remove the transitive dependencies from my Android project and for some reason exclude is not working when i try to remove a dependency from my particular dependency.

For example i want to remove support-annotations from my project

if i use

configurations {
    all*.exclude group: 'com.android.support', module:'support-annotations'
}

The dependency gets excluded and from the dependency tree. i can see the dependency tree by using ./gradlew app:dependencies

But if i use

 compile('com.android.support:support-v4:23.4.0')
            {
                exclude group: 'com.android.support', module:'support-annotations'
            }

Then i still see the dependency in the dependency tree.

So my question is that why is it not working when i try to remove the dependency from a particular dependency ?

Update 1:

Also can anyone tell me what does the star (*) symbol next to dependency in the tree represent ?

Update 2

I am also using Fresco I tried the same thing with Fresco and exclude rule seems to work for it

Dependency Tree of Fresco

Dependency Tree when i exclude imagepipeline-base in Fresco

compile("com.facebook.fresco:fresco:0.9.0")
            {
                exclude group: 'com.facebook.fresco', module: 'imagepipeline-base'
            }

As you can see the imagepipeline-base dependency gets excluded. So i don't know why this doesn't work for Android Support Annotations transitive dependency

Is this only an example? Because you could just not explicitly compile the v4 library — OneCricketeer, May 26 '16 at 12:22
@cricket_007 yes its just an example. I have a complex dependency tree but if this simple example can be solved then i will be able to solve the complex tree. — Sheraz Ahmad Khilji, May 26 '16 at 12:52
Which gradle version do you use? On 2.13 it works correctly. — Crazyjavahacking, May 26 '16 at 12:53
@Crazyjavahacking I am using `classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.1.0'` — Sheraz Ahmad Khilji, May 26 '16 at 12:55
@Crazyjavahacking Yes Its our CI server . That currently uses it — Sheraz Ahmad Khilji, May 26 '16 at 12:57
@Crazyjavahacking which version does it work on for you ? i tried using `'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2+' but the roblem still persists — Sheraz Ahmad Khilji, May 26 '16 at 13:00
I was using the plain Gradle, not the one provided by Google. In plain Gradle it works in 2.13. — Crazyjavahacking, May 26 '16 at 13:02
you are showing dependencies for plugin internal configuration, prefixed with _, there must be "compile" one - does it contain excluded dependency? — m.ostroverkhov, May 26 '16 at 13:18
@m.ostroverkhov Yup the _debugCompile also contains the excluded dependency. I think they are both identical — Sheraz Ahmad Khilji, May 26 '16 at 13:28
point is, in second case you exclude from "compile" configuration - you should look for exact "compile", not prefixed one - and see if there is your excluded dependency. — m.ostroverkhov, May 26 '16 at 13:40
@m.ostroverkhov look at my update to question. it seems there is something weird happening. — Sheraz Ahmad Khilji, May 26 '16 at 13:56

Sheraz Ahmad Khilji · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-26T16:57:25.463

So i have figured this out with the help of one of my friends. The reason why i was not able to remove support-annotation was because most of the other dependencies were using support-v4 as transitive dependency and those support-v4 also had their own copy of support-annotation.

Now there are 2 solutions to this

Solution 1:

exclude support-annotation from all the dependencies that containsupport-v4 as transitive dependency.

Solution 2:

exclude support-annotation only from my support-v4 dependency and remove support-v4 dependency from all other dependencies that have support-v4 as transitive dependency.

Note: Using one of the above approaches i was able to solve my problem and figure out how we can remove transitive dependencies when they are referenced from multiple dependencies.

And regarding the ( * ) symbol it means that the dependency tree is for that dependency is already shown. Instead of showing the whole tree for those dependencies again gradle shows ( * ) symbol with them.

Sample build.gradle file is available here

Thanks a lot. Solution 2 worked for me. I was facing the same issues while working with a gradle project. — Razib, Aug 01 '19 at 08:37

Not able to remove transitive dependency from gradle in an Android Project

1 Answers1