Gradle subprojects won't compile with dependency on other subproject

Question

I have a Multi project gradle project with the following structure.

Project A: The top level project that all sub projects reside in.
  SubProject B: 
  SubProject C:
  SubProject D:
  SubProject E:
  SubProject Shared: Every 'SubProject' has a dependency to this project "compile project(':Shared')"

Everything works correctly when running Gradle tasks from the top level 'Project A'

However, when I try to run an individual task on a subproject such as 'SubProject C' I get the following error.

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception

What went wrong:

A problem occurred evaluating root project 'SubProject C'.

Project with path ':Shared' could not be found in root project 'SubProject C'.

I think I see the problem here, Gradle thinks my sub project is a root project? However I do not know how to resolve this.

My top level settings.gradle file looks like this

rootProject.name = 'Project A'

include 'SubProject B'
include 'SubProject C'
include 'SubProject D'
include 'SubProject E'
include 'SubProject Shared'

This is my build.gradle file for 'SubProject C'

dependencies {
    compile project(':Shared')
}

Bonus question... Do the sub projects need a settings.gradle file with the 'rootProject.name' set as the sub projects name?

Urania

how are you running individual task on your sub-project? Right way to do it is gradle :project:task – Dotson

@RaviVasamsetty Right now i'm using the eclipse gradle plugin to run them. – Urania

I am using buildship gradle plugin and it is not having any issue running subproject task. Which plugin are you using? – Dotson

Answer 1

I think the issue is with your settings.gradle file.

Replace the your settings.gradle file with below code.

rootProject.name = 'Project A'

include 'SubProject B',':SubProject C',':SubProject D',':SubProject E'
include ':SubProject Shared'

Try running the build script of 'SubProjectC'. Hope it will work.

And answer for your second question.

We don't need seperate settings.gradle for each subprojects.

Timbal

This did not work for me, using Gradle 5.3 :-( BTW docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/multi_project_builds.html does not use include ":..."?! – Dictatorship

Answer 2

In my case the problem was that my subproject had settings.gradle with

rootProject.name = 'MySubProject'

removing the file fixed it. (It seems you must not have the file at all, it is not enough to remove the property.)

Heroic

By far, this is the smoothest and easiest answer found after many many searches. Thank you – Artisan