android - Build flavors for different version of same class

Question

I've got a project, structured like this:

project/
   |
   |---src/
        |---flavorA2/
        |      |
        |      |---java/
        |      |     |---com.abc.flavorA.mk2
        |      |                 |-----classA.java
        |      |                 |-----classB.java
        |      |---res/
        |      |---AndroidManifest.xml
        |
        |---main
        |      |---java/
        |      |     |---com.abc.flavorA
        |      |                 |-----classA.java
        |      |                 |-----classB.java
        |      |                 |-----classC.java
        |      |                 |-----classD.java
        |      |---res/
        |      |    |---drawable/
        |      |    |---layout/
        |      |    |---values/
        |      |         
        |      |---AndroidManifest.xml
        |
        |---flavorA

flavorA will use the source and assets from main completely while flavorA2 has some small changes in classA and classB and the package name is also changed to com.abc.flavorA.mk2.

I had the build.gradle file like this:

...
buildTypes {
        release {
            runProguard false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.txt'
        }
    }
    productFlavors {
        flavorA2 {
            packageName "com.abc.flavorA.mk2"
            versionCode 2
            versionName "1.0.1"
        }

        flavorA {
            packageName "com.abc.flavorA"
        }
    }
...

I run the code by selecting the build variant to flavorA2. However the running results shows that the gradle still choose the classes (classA and classB) from main instead of using the changed version inside flavorA2.

Am I missing something here?

Answer 1

Since you have the classes under 2 different packages, these are totally different classes. So the classes aren't replacing each other.

With flavors, you can't override class files. So, one way to accomplish what you want is move these classes out of main, and into flavorA.

So you would have something like this:

project/
   |
   |---src/
        |---flavorA2/
        |      |
        |      |---java/
        |      |     |---com.abc
        |      |                 |-----classA.java
        |      |                 |-----classB.java
        |      |---res/
        |      |---AndroidManifest.xml
        |
        |---main/
        |      |---java/
        |      |     |---com.abc.flavorA
        |      |                 |-----classC.java
        |      |                 |-----classD.java
        |      |---res/
        |      |    |---drawable/
        |      |    |---layout/
        |      |    |---values/
        |      |         
        |      |---AndroidManifest.xml
        |
        |---flavorA/
        |      |---java/
        |      |     |---com.abc
        |      |                 |-----classA.java
        |      |                 |-----classB.java

This way, whenever you pick a flavor, only one version of ClassA and ClassB will be visible.