Dependency with packaging=pom is not resolved transitively

Help/Discuss
1

I am upgrading a particular build from 2.14.1 to 4.4

It has a dependency which has packaging=pom and which is used to pull in a few other dependencies as a bundle. This is resolved as expected in 2.14.1 (i.e. you get the transitive dependencies) but this behaviour changes in 4.4 in 2 ways.

Firstly I have to explicitly say that the dependency is of type pom (as in ‘com.foo:bar:1.2.3@pom’) otherwise the build fails because there is no jar for this dependency.

Secondly, once I’ve made this change, I do not get the transitive dependencies. It appears this is because org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.dsl.dependencies.ModuleFactoryHelperdoes the following

public class ModuleFactoryHelper {
	public static void addExplicitArtifactsIfDefined(ExternalDependency moduleDependency, String artifactType, String classifier) {
		String actualArtifactType = artifactType;
		if (actualArtifactType == null) {
			if (classifier != null) {
				actualArtifactType = DependencyArtifact.DEFAULT_TYPE;
			}
		} else {
			moduleDependency.setTransitive(false);
		}
		if (actualArtifactType != null) {
			moduleDependency.addArtifact(new DefaultDependencyArtifact(moduleDependency.getName(),
					actualArtifactType, actualArtifactType, classifier, null));
		}
	}
}

I can workaround this by passing setting transitive = true via a configuration closure after creating the dependency but it seems odd.

What is the rationale for this behaviour?
Is there another, correct, way to express this dependency in gradle?

1 Like
2

I don’t have a solution for you, but I share your concern. I have projects that generate and consume pom-only modules and this sounds like an issue I will also run into if I try upgrading from Gradle 2.3.

This part is not new behaviour. “Artifact-only” dependencies have (always?) defaulted to non-transitive in the past.

3

it resolved them transitively in 2.14.1 so it is definitely a change

4

Do you have an example that reproduces this handy? They are not resolved transitively in my project, using 2.3.