Configuring and accessing flatDir repositories in gradle

Lets assume there are two projects: Project1/module1 and Project2/module2, and module2 depends on a JAR file built by module1.

Step 1: Declare repository in Project2/module2/build.gradle

repositories {
    flatDir {
        dirs new File(project.rootDir, 
                      "/../Project1/module1/build/libs")
    }
}

Step 2: Declare dependency in Project2/module2/build.gradle

dependencies {
    compile ':module1-1.0-SNAPSHOT'
}

All you need to do now is to run JAR gradle task in Project1/module1.  It'll place module1-1.0.SNAPSHOT.jar into Project1/module1/build/libs folder.  After that Project2/module2 will be able to access that jar.  Note that you need a colon (':') in front of 'module1-1.0-SNAPSHOT'.

This quick solution works really well if you need to iterate fast and don't want to setup a local maven repository.