How to force Gradle to redownload dependencies?

Sometimes We want to redownload dependencies in a Gradle project. How can you force grade dependencies to download freshly?

This post describes how to do the command line to force snapshots and release dependencies in a Gradle project.

In development, We have many use cases where we have to redownload dependencies.

• when you are doing Gradle build the first time, It downloads all dependencies For suppose, the build fails and some dependencies are not downloaded due to network issues.
• Sometimes, the dependency version has been changed, and You have to re-download the new version

Gradle downloads the dependencies from remote repositories like Nexus. My java application build failed as spring-core loaded partially and was not downloaded completely.

You can check another post on maven force redownload dependencies.

#Clean Gradle cache or single dependency

It is straightforward to remove all Gradle cache from a build.

Gradle dependencies and metadata are stored under your project .gradle/caches/ folder.

In windows, This folder is located in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\.gradle\cache In Linux, you can find it in the user home directory $userhome/.gradle/caches/

on Windows, You can manually delete the .gradle/caches/ folder and do a fresh Gradle build and it downloads dependencies from scratch.

on Linux, You can use the below run command

rm -rf $userhome/.gradle/caches/

The only drawback is, that if your Gradle project has a lot of dependencies, You have to download all dependencies for the first time and it is time taking process.

Let’s move to another approach.

#How to force update dependencies of a Gradle project command line?

It is an inbuilt option provided by Gradle with a command line.

--refresh-dependencies command line parameter tells Gradle to build with ignore cache folder dependencies and do freshly download all dependencies from a remote repository.

Here is a command-line option

In windows, You can use the below commands.

gradlew build --refresh-dependencies

if it is a spring boot project, You can use the below command

gradlew bootRun --refresh-dependencies

In Linux and Mac systems, You can use the below commands.

./gradlew build --refresh-dependencies

if it is a spring boot project, You can use the below command

./gradlew bootRun --refresh-dependencies

#build Gradle configuration with cacheChangingModulesFor and change attribute

build.gradle file, You can add the below configuration

configurations.all {
    resolutionStrategy.cacheChangingModulesFor 0, 'seconds'
}

And my dependencies with change attribute in Gradle configuration are as follows for gradle version <6.3

implementation('com.package:artifact:1.0.1-SNAPSHOT') {
    changing = true
}

for gradle version >6.3

implementation('com.package:artifact:1.0.1-SNAPSHOT') {
    isChanging = true
}

#Conclusion

Listed out different approaches to update dependencies in the Gradle project.