Android: Skip Gradle "testClasses" task for a dependency project

Question

I have followed this guide to create a JUnit test file for my main Android module (let's call it "module-a"), in Android Studio v1.4.

My "module-a" has a dependency on an external library that is provided as a .aar file and for which I had to create a dedicated module.

This dependency causes an error:

When right clicking the test Java file and hitting "Run MyTestName" , it fails with this error

Error:Gradle: 
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Task 'testClasses' not found in project ':module-b'.

Removing the dependency on module-b solves the problem.

Excerpt of module-a build.gradle:

compile project(':module-b')

module-b build.gradle:

configurations.create("default")
artifacts.add("default", file('library-b.aar'))

How should I configure Gradle so that it does not try to run the testClasses task on "module-b" ? (this should solve my issue)

Answer 1

I did not find a way to skip the testClasses task for module-b: it seems that actions started from Android Studio (like running a JUnit test) run Gradle commands that cannot be modified. In my case:

Information:Gradle: Executing tasks:
[:module-a:prepareFree_flavorDebugUnitTestDependencies,
:module-a:generateFree_flavorDebugSources,
:module-a:mockableAndroidJar,
:module-a:assembleFree_flavorDebug,
:module-a:assembleFree_flavorDebugUnitTest,
:module-b:testClasses]

I found a workaround for my problem, though:

Add the following code to module-b build.gradle:

task testClasses {
    doLast {
        println 'This is a dummy testClasses task'
    }
}

Kotlin DSL:

task("testClasses").doLast {
    println("This is a dummy testClasses task")
}