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Multiple support libraries conflicts using git submodules

So I have a project with multiple libraries attached as submodules - this means I can't commit to them.

Each of the libraries already includes an android support library, which obviously leads to an error

Conversion to Dalvik format failed: Unable to execute dex: Multiple dex files define...

while trying to build apk.

Of course I can remove duplicate support libraries from library projects, but I won't be able to commit this changes, and as result use my repo with Jenkins, etc.

For now I see only one choice - fork libraries, remove conflicting jar from them, and use forked versions as submodules. But to be honest, I would like to avoid it.

So, is there any way to build apk with multiple support libraries, or exclude those libraries from git submodules while cloning them?

Solution

  • If you can automate (in a script) the remove of those duplicate libraries references, then you could register to those submodule repos a smudge script that would, on checkout, remove those duplicate.

    content filter

    (from Scott Schacon's Pro Git book page on Git Attributes: section "Keyword Expansion")

    Each time you update those submodule SHA1, that smudge script would automatically clean up that repo.

    I do that on a submodule by copying the filter I want directly in parentRepo/.git/module/asubmodule/info/attribute.
    See this script for instance:

    githubdir="${H}/.git/modules/gitlab"
if [[ ! -e "${githubdir}/info/attributes" ]]; then
  cp "${gtl}/config.gitlab" "${githubdir}/config"
  cp "${gtl}/attributes.gitlab" "${githubdir}/info/attributes"
  xxgit=1 git --work-tree="${github}" --git-dir="${githubdir}" checkout HEAD -- "${github}"

    With attributes.gitlab being:

    *.rb filter=fileExpandPath
*.rake filter=fileExpandPath

    That would call:

    • on checkout a script fileExpandPath_replace (which I trigger with the line above "git checkout HEAD -- /path/to/submodule")
    • on checkin a script fileExpandPath_restore (which you might not need since you won't be doing any commit in the submodules)