Building many product flavors is too slow

Question

I have problem, when I am still adding new flavors, it takes more and more time to build. I add it like this:

productFlavors {
   okapps {
      applicationId = 'cz.anywhere.okapps'
      signingConfig = AdamSigningVariable
      versionCode = 41
      versionName = "3.0.1"

      android.sourceSets {
         okapps.res.srcDirs = ['src/adam_okapps_resources/res', 'src/okapps/res']
      }
   }
   ...
   ...
}

When I comment all other flavors and only one is uncommented and build, it takes about 10 seconds. But when I build all (about 180 flavors), it takes almost 5 minutes.

Symphonize

Updated the latest experimental Gradle plugin and the poor performance remains. In my case, dynamically generating around 300 product flavors (debug + release) takes 3 to 4.5 minutes on MacBook Pro 2015 with Intel Core i5 2.7GHz and 8GB RAM. – Recha

Answer 1

You can try and ignore the other product flavor you are not using, we did it as following:

Add to build.gradle

android {
    productFlavors{
    .
    .
    .
    }

    if (project.rootProject.file('dev.props').exists()){
        def devProps = new Properties()
        devProps.load(project.rootProject.file('dev.props').newDataInputStream())
        def currentDevFlavor = devProps.DEV_FLAVOR

        android.variantFilter { variant ->
            def flavorName = variant.getFlavors().get(0).name
            if(currentDevFlavor  && !flavorName.equals(currentDevFlavor)) {
                variant.setIgnore(true);
            }
        }
    }
}

And then add a file dev.props with the line DEV_FLAVOR=aflavorname

This way when u sync, gradle will act like there is only one flavor, and u dont need to comment anything.

You can also add dev.props to .gitignore.

Neelon

I ran into same issues as OP. This worked out great for me. Thanks! – Kei

aflavorname should I have to change it every time I change my flavour, or can we make it dynamic according to the flavour selected? – Creight

Well... once you added aflavorname you CAN'T change the flavor... so i guess u have to change it every time you wish to change the flavor and you can't do it dynamic – Neelon

I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall. something perfect :) – Yokoyama

Can multiple clients be added to dev.props? DEV FLAVOR=android1, android2, android3 – Yokoyama

It's absolutely incredible how bad this is. I get why it would slow down a gradle sync, but when I'm building why the hell doesn't it ignore other flavors to begin with? Anyway, thanks for this. Life saver, even 7 years later. – Alchemist