# "You can't change a configuration which is not in unresolved state!" in trivial multi-project build

**URL:** <https://discuss.gradle.org/t/you-cant-change-a-configuration-which-is-not-in-unresolved-state-in-trivial-multi-project-build/3410>\
**Category:** Old Forum Archive\
**Created:** [October 3, 2012, 8:20am UTC](https://discuss.gradle.org/t/you-cant-change-a-configuration-which-is-not-in-unresolved-state-in-trivial-multi-project-build/3410 "2012-10-03T08:20:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![NickV](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a8b319/32.png) [@NickV](https://discuss.gradle.org/u/NickV)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 8:20am UTC](https://discuss.gradle.org/t/you-cant-change-a-configuration-which-is-not-in-unresolved-state-in-trivial-multi-project-build/3410/1 "2012-10-03T08:20:00Z")

</div>

Hi,

I’m trying to begin migrating a very complicated multi-project ant build system into Gradle. The first step is to move dependency resolution into gradle, however I am having some issues with understanding how to define dependency configurations in a multi-project environment.

What I want to achieve is to have each subproject containing a build.gradle file, and be able to resolve and download its own dependencies. I will then hand over to the legacy ant script to do the build (for now, at least). I am currently getting the error “You can’t change a configuration which is not in unresolved state!” when I run my simple single project example. This is such a trivial example I am sure that I am somehow misunderstanding how to achieve what I want, but having tried many permutations have had no luck.

I have the following structure:

```gradle
/build.gradle
/settings.gradle
/subproj/build.gradle

```

/build.gradle

```gradle
defaultTasks 'updateLibs'
  allprojects {
 configurations {
  runtime
 }
   repositories {
  mavenCentral()
 }
    task updateLibs {
  copy {
   from configurations.runtime
   into file("lib")
  }
 }
}

```

/settings.gradle

```gradle
include 'subproj'

```

/subproj/build.gradle

```gradle
dependencies {
 runtime 'com.google.guava:guava:13.0.1'
}

```

When I run this build I get the following error:

```gradle
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.
  * Where:
Build file '/Users/nick/tmp/bld/subproj/build.gradle' line: 2
  * What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating project ':subproj'.
> You can't change a configuration which is not in unresolved state!

```

As far as I can see the configurations are not automatically shared or inherited by projects, as if I remove the configurations declaration from allprojects the build fails, as I would expect, because the task refers to a configuration that is undefined in the subproject. Does this mean that each subproject needs to have a configuration with a unique name, or have I another failure of understanding preventing this from working?

Cheers,

Nick

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rene](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/gradle/user_avatar/discuss.gradle.org/rene/32/8082_2.png) [@Rene](https://discuss.gradle.org/u/Rene)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 10:24am UTC](https://discuss.gradle.org/t/you-cant-change-a-configuration-which-is-not-in-unresolved-state-in-trivial-multi-project-build/3410/2 "2012-10-03T10:24:00Z")

</div>

Hello Nick, your build scripts are just fine, except one little problem.

The problem is your updateLibs task. Your current updateLibs task definition looks like this:

```gradle
task updateLibs {
        copy {
            from configurations.runtime
            into file("lib")
        }
    }

```

This task has no action defined, _BUT_ within its configuration closure, you declared a copy operation. This copy operation resolves you’re runtime configuration during the configuration phase. After that resolving, you cannot add further dependencies to a configuration as the error message you got already told you. To understand the differences of configuration and execution phase have a look at the usergude, that explains this in more detail: [http://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/userguide\_single.html#sec:configuration\_and\_execution\_phase](http://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/userguide_single.html#sec:configuration_and_execution_phase)

To fix your problem, I can see two options:

OPTION #1: Move the copy operation in a doLast block:

```gradle
task updateLibs {
    doLast{
        copy {
            from configurations.runtime
            into file("lib")
        }
}

```

OPTION #2: Refactor your updateLibs task to be a Copy task:

```gradle
task updateLibs(type:Copy) {
    from configurations.runtime
    into file("lib")
}

```

I strongly recommend you option2 as it has some other advantages like the build-in up-to-date check.

hope that helped,

cheers, René