How does Gradle know whether to do a single or multiproject build?

How does Gradle know whether to do a single or multiproject build? 

If you trigger a multiproject build from a directory with a settings file, things are easy. But Gradle also allows you to execute the build from within any subproject taking part in the build. ^[10] If you execute Gradle from within a project with no settings.gradle file, Gradle looks for a settings.gradle file in the following way:

• It looks in a directory called master which has the same nesting level as the current dir.

• If not found yet, it searches parent directories.

• If not found yet, the build is executed as a single project build.

• If a settings.gradle file is found, Gradle checks if the current project is part of the multiproject hierarchy defined in the found settings.gradle file. If not, the build is executed as a single project build. Otherwise a multiproject build is executed.

What is the purpose of this behavior? Gradle needs to determine whether the project you are in is a subproject of a multiproject build or not. Of course, if it is a subproject, only the subproject and its dependent projects are built, but Gradle needs to create the build configuration for the whole multiproject build (see Chapter 25, Multi-project Builds). You can use the -u command line option to tell Gradle not to look in the parent hierarchy for a settings.gradle file. The current project is then always built as a single project build. If the current project contains a settings.gradle file, the -u option has no meaning. Such a build is always executed as:

• a single project build, if the settings.gradle file does not define a multiproject hierarchy

• a multiproject build, if the settings.gradle file does define a multiproject hierarchy.

The automatic search for a settings.gradle file only works for multi-project builds with a physical hierarchical or flat layout. For a flat layout you must additionally follow the naming convention described above (“master”). Gradle supports arbitrary physical layouts for a multiproject build, but for such arbitrary layouts you need to execute the build from the directory where the settings file is located. For information on how to run partial builds from the root see Section 25.4, “Running tasks by their absolute path”.

Gradle creates a Project object for every project taking part in the build. For a multi-project build these are the projects specified in the Settings object (plus the root project). Each project object has by default a name equal to the name of its top level directory, and every project except the root project has a parent project. Any project may have child projects.