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Publishing Android libraries to GitHub Packages

Github has recently introduced the GitHub Packages, a package management service where developers and organisations can publish packages either publicly for the open source community or privately for use within an organisation.

It is available free for public repositories and with a pay-as-you-go pricing model for private repositories. More information can be found at the below link:

About GitHub Packages

Part 1 — Publish Android library to GitHub Packages

Step 1 : Generate a Personal Access Token for GitHub

• Inside you GitHub account:
• Settings -> Developer Settings -> Personal Access Tokens -> Generate new token
• Make sure you select the following scopes (“ write:packages”, “ read:packages”) and Generate a token

Generate Personal Access Token : Select scopes

• After Generating make sure to copy your new personal access token. You cannot see it again! The only option is to regenerate a key or create a new key.

Step 2: Store your GitHub — Personal Access Token details

• Create a github.properties file within your root Android project
• In case of a public repository make sure you add this file to .gitignore to keep the token private
• Add properties gpr.usr=GITHUB_USERID and gpr.key=PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN
• Replace GITHUB_USERID with personal / organisation Github User ID and PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN with the token generated in #Step 1

Alternatively you can also add the GPR_USER and GPR_API_KEY values to your environment variables on you local machine or build server to avoid creating a github properties file

Step 3 : Update build.gradle inside the library module

• Add the following code to build.gradle inside the library module

Publish Android Library to Github Packages

Step 4 : Publish the Android Library onto GitHub Packages

Make sure to build and run the tasks to generate the library files inside build/outputs/aar/ before proceeding to publish the library.

• Execute the Publish gradle task which is inside your library module

$ gradle publish

• Once the task is successful you should be able to see the Package under the Packages tab of the GitHub Account

Published packages on GitHub Packages

• In case of a failure run the task with –stacktrace, –info or –debug to check the logs for detailed information about the causes.

NOTE: The library file (aar) will not include the transitive dependencies (i.e. dependencies used by the library).

For Maven repos, Gradle will download the dependencies using the pom file which will contain the dependencies list.

In this sample code/project, the pom file generated does not include the nested dependencies list. You’ll have to modify the build.gradle to generate a pom file with dependencies included while building and before publishing the library. A sample piece of code can be found below:

Android Library — generate POM file with Transitive dependencies

Part 2 — Using an Android library from GitHub Packages within an Android Application

Currently the GitHub Packages requires us to Authenticate to download an Android Library (Public or Private) hosted on the GitHub Package. This might change for future releases.

Steps 1 and 2 are similar to Part 1 and can be skipped if already done while publishing a library

Step 1 : Generate a Personal Access Token for GitHub

• Inside you GitHub account:
• Settings -> Developer Settings -> Personal Access Tokens -> Generate new token
• Make sure you select the following scopes (“ read:packages”) and Generate a token
• After Generating make sure to copy your new personal access token. You cannot see it again! The only option is to generate a new key.

Step 2: Store your GitHub — Personal Access Token details

• Create a github.properties file within your root Android project
• In case of a public repository make sure you add this file to .gitignore for keep the token private
• Add properties gpr.usr=GITHUB_USERID and gpr.key=PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN
• Replace GITHUB_USERID with personal / organisation Github User ID and PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN with the token generated in #Step 1

Alternatively you can also add the GPR_USER and GPR_API_KEY values to your environment variables on you local machine or build server to avoid creating a github properties file

Step 3 : Update build.gradle inside the application module

• Add the following code to build.gradle inside the app module that will be using the library published on GitHub Packages

• inside dependencies of the build.gradle of app module, use the following code

• Thats it! Sync your Android gradle project and the library from Github Packages should be synced with your Android Project

A sample implementation Android Project, related to this article can be found on GitHub at the below link:

enefce/AndroidLibraryForGitHubPackagesDemo