Simply calling `generate.sh` should result in a `deps.json` file which is used in the derivation that provides Gradle dependencies when building the Android app.
You can see in [`nix/mobile/android/release.nix`](../../mobile/android/release.nix) that it's used via the `-Dmaven.repo.local='${deps.gradle}'` Gradle flag.
# Files
First we have the files that store data on Gradle dependencies:
*`proj.list` - List of projects of which our Gradle project consists.
*`deps.list` - List of dependencies for our project and sub-projects.
*`deps.urls` - List of URLs to POMs for all of the dependencies.
*`deps.json` - Final file containing all of the necessary data for Nix.
Generating scripts:
-`generate.sh` - Main script which generates all the above files.
-`get_projects.sh` - Calls Gradle to get a list of sub-projects.
-`get_deps.sh` - Calls Gradle to get all the dependencies of sub-projects.
-`gradle_parser.awk` - An AWK script that parses above Gradle output.
-`url2json.sh` - Converts the list of URLs into a format consumable by Nix.
Finally we have the Nix derivation in `default.nix` which produces a derivation with all of the Gradle project dependencies:
$ ls -l /nix/store/57g95ik19k6gs5w68yid3hzhsax60i3m-status-react-maven-deps | head -n 5
total 32
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 3 Jan 1 1970 android
dr-xr-xr-x 35 root root 35 Jan 1 1970 androidx
dr-xr-xr-x 15 root root 15 Jan 1 1970 com
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 3 Jan 1 1970 commons-cli
...
```
# Dependencies
One dependency these scripts require is the [go-maven-resolver](https://github.com/status-im/go-maven-resolver) which turns a list of packages into list of all URLs of POMs for them and their dependencies.
One edge case that is currently not handled by this setup is an addition of a new dependency that requires a version of Gradle we don't have. In that case running `make nix-update-gradle` would fail with:
```
AILURE: Build failed with an exception.
* What went wrong:
A problem occurred configuring project ':react-native-example-project'.
> Could not resolve all artifacts for configuration ':react-native-example-project:classpath'.
> Could not find com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.4.0.
This happens because `get_projects.sh` and `get_deps.sh` depend on running Gradle to generate their output, and that will not work because Gradle cannot find the matching JAR for the new dependency.
A manual solution would involve adding that specific Gradle version into `deps.urls`: