File dependencies allow you to directly add a set of files to a configuration, without first adding them to a repository. This can be useful if you cannot, or do not want to, place certain files in a repository. Or if you do not want to use any repositories at all for storing your dependencies.

To add some files as a dependency for a configuration, you simply pass a file collection as a dependency:

dependencies {
    runtime files('libs/a.jar', 'libs/b.jar')
    runtime fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: '*.jar')
}

File dependencies are not included in the published dependency descriptor for your project. However, file dependencies are included in transitive project dependencies within the same build. This means they cannot be used outside the current build, but they can be used with the same build.

You can declare which tasks produce the files for a file dependency. You might do this when, for example, the files are generated by the build.