April 6 2020, Monday

Introducing androidx.dev

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about using AndroidX Snapshot builds. However, discovering the repository URL's and keeping up with the changes in AndroidX build infrastructure can be daunting. We also wanted to make it a lot easier to consume AndroidX & Jetpack Compose snapshot builds.

To help with this problem, we wrote a new web-service to help you discover snapshots and artifacts in builds.

Introducing androidx.dev.

androidx.dev can serve as a Maven repository for serving snapshot builds. Click on the Snapshots link, to explore which builds are available. You can also get to the latest build using this URL.

Consuming Artifacts

Once you know the buildId, add the following snippet to your build.gradle file to consume artifacts from that build.

AndroidX Artifacts

repositories {
    google()
    // Note the build id in the URL. Substitute it with the build you want
    maven { url 'https://androidx.dev/snapshots/builds/[buildId]/artifacts/repository' }
}

// To use this repository:

dependencies {
  // Note the use of the -SNAPSHOT in the name of the artifact
  implementation "androidx.work:work-runtime:2.4.0-SNAPSHOT"
}

Jetpack Compose Artifacts

To use the latest Jetpack Compose builds, use the snippet below:

repositories {
    google()
    // Note the build id & `ui` in the URL. Substitute it with the build you want
    maven { url 'https://androidx.dev/snapshots/builds/[buildId]/artifacts/ui/repository' }
}

// To use this repository:

dependencies {
  // Note the use of the -SNAPSHOT in the name of the artifact
  implementation "androidx.ui:ui-tooling:0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
}

That's really it. Hope you enjoy using this new service.