Run task after packageApplication when using the android gradle plugin

Question

Gradle has the ability to run tasks after other tasks. The syntax is taskY.mustRunAfter taskX. The android gradle plugin says one of the ApplicationVariant tasks it defines is packageApplication.

In my build.gradle I have taskX.mustRunAfter packageApplication

The error I get is "Could not find property 'packageApplication' on project ':someproject'."

Is it even possible to get access to the packageApplication task? If so is it considered bad practice?

Answer 1

Please note this sentence from the documentation:

By using 'must run after" ordering rule you can specify that taskB must always run after taskA, whenever both taskA and taskB are scheduled for execution.

This means that

taskX.mustRunAfter packageApplication

doesn't make the taskX run always after packageApplication but just if you type:

./gradlew taskX packageApplication

On the other hand, it doesn't define a dependency, that is it doesn't automatically run taskX task.

To do something, after a task is executed you can use the doLast closure:

taskX.doLast{ println 'Hello' }

The packageApplication is a property of the ApplicationVariant class but not a task. The tasks are package<VariantName>.

Answer 2

I found my the answer. rciovati cleared up the confusion around mustRunAfter and that what I was doing was the wrong approach. I ended up converted taskY to a groovy function. Then used the following code:

android.applicationVariants.all { variant ->
    // rename apk after we assemble the application
    variant.assemble.doLast {
        taskY(variant)
}