Allow to exclude only some artifacts of a transitive dependency

[mahozad]

I am using the org.bytedeco:ffmpeg-platform library which is, I think, an aggregator dependency like junit-jupiter except that junit-jupiter aggregates some separate dependencies but ffmpeg-platform aggregates some artifacts of a single dependency (org.bytedeco:ffmpeg).

The problem is, it brings many JARs that in total are about 250 MB and I don't need them all for my GUI application for one OS/architecture. How can I use the org.bytedeco:ffmpeg-platform library and exclude some of the transitive artifacts it brings?

For example, I tried to use classifiers like the following to exclude linux-x86 JAR artifact but it doesn't work:

implementation("org.bytedeco:ffmpeg-platform:5.1.2-1.5.8") {
    exclude(group = "org.bytedeco", module = "ffmpeg:linux-x86")
}

Expected Behavior

To be able to exclude some artifacts of transitive dependencies.

Current Behavior

Gradle brings all artifacts of transitive dependencies.

Context

My current solution is to not use the org.bytedeco:ffmpeg-platform aggregator dependency and use the org.bytedeco:ffmpeg directly and include my desired artifacts one by one with classifiers:

implementation("org.bytedeco:ffmpeg:5.1.2-1.5.8") // The main artifact
implementation("org.bytedeco:ffmpeg:5.1.2-1.5.8:windows-x86")     // My first desired artifact
implementation("org.bytedeco:ffmpeg:5.1.2-1.5.8:windows-x86_64") // My second desired artifact

Another example library

For another similar aggregator dependency which brings artifacts of another dependency see jna-platform which brings jna artifacts.

[eskatos]

Thank you for your interest in Gradle.

We have no plans to provide that feature in Gradle.
If you don't need all of architectures, specifying exactly the dependencies you need is the way to go.