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Gradle can't know that your task is independent if you use the same output locations. That is why it complains due to possible correctness issues. Basically Gradle can't know what task should run first. You can force the order of tasks with "mustRunAfter" and then Gradle won't complain (I believe full error message hints on that). Usually an even better solution is, to write to a different output location. Normally, you don't need to share the same output folder. And with that you also get all the performance benefits, e.g. with configuration caching, Gradle can run these tasks in parallel without collisions

Or you don't use

@OutputDirectory

, but individual output files, then they can also land in the same directory.

What if, • there is a first task called

:a

. It creates files in

build/a

. • there is a second task called

:b

. It depends on

:a

, and creates a subfolder in

build/a

. • I would like to create a task

:custom

that works on the outputs of

:a

, which doesn't need anything from

:b

.

:b

is very slow, so I do not want

:custom

to depend on it. Following the tips from other people in this channel, I created an intermediate

Copy

task that copies

build/a

to

build/custom

, so

:custom

works in its own folder. However, Gradle still complains that

build/a

is created by

:b

, and

:custom

should depend on it.

However, Gradle still complains that

build/a

is created by

:b

, and

:custom

should depend on it.

You don't need dependency, but you just have to specifiy at least the order relation. So if you don't want for

:custom

to depend on

:b

, you can set the order with

mustRunAfter

and that should solve the issue. E.g.: you set

:custom mustRunAfter :b

or

:b mustRunAfter :custom

. I guess second is better, since

b

is slow. That way tasks won't depend on each other. So when you run just :custom, it won't run also :b . But they won't run in parallel with cc. Another option is that you try to depend/output only invidiual output files and not whole folder (or whole task a) as Vampire suggested

Even defining an order constraint would not be sufficient. It would care about the warning, but not the problem. For example, you run

:a

, then you run

:b

. Then you run

:a

again and it will not be up-to-date, as

:a

declares the whole

build/a

as output directory, so it sees its outputs were changed and runs again. If caching is enabled, it would be even worse, because then - except if

:a

clears out

build/a

in the beginning - the file gernerated by

:b

would now be considered

:a

outputs too and stored in the cache entry. You should really avoid having overlapping outputs.

I see, I understand. The problem is I want the outputs of task

:a

without `:b`'s changes, and I don't control the fact that they use the same directory :/

Then you should complain to the one controlling that fact. 🙂

Thanks, I will 😅