# Relocating Packages

Shadow is capable of scanning a project's classes and relocating specific dependencies to a new location. This is often required when one of the dependencies is susceptible to breaking changes in versions or to classpath pollution in a downstream project.

Google's Guava and the ASM library are typical cases where package relocation can come in handy.

Shadow uses the ASM library to modify class byte code to replace the package name and any import statements for a class. Any non-class files that are stored within a package structure are also relocated to the new location.

// Relocating a Package
tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
   relocate 'junit.framework', 'shadow.junit'
}

The code snippet will rewrite the location for any class in the junit.framework to be shadow.junit. For example, the class junit.textui.TestRunner becomes shadow.junit.TestRunner. In the resulting JAR, the class file is relocated from junit/textui/TestRunner.class to shadow/junit/TestRunner.class.

Relocation operates at a package level. It is not necessary to specify any patterns for matching, it will operate simply on the prefix provided.

Relocation will be applied globally to all instances of the matched prefix. That is, it does not scope to only the dependencies being shadowed. Be specific as possible when configuring relocation as to avoid unintended relocations.

# Filtering Relocation

Specific classes or files can be included/excluded from the relocation operation if necessary. Use Ant Path Matcher (opens new window) syntax to specify matching path for your files and directories.

// Configuring Filtering for Relocation
tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
   relocate('junit.textui', 'a') {
       exclude 'junit.textui.TestRunner'
   }
   relocate('junit.framework', 'b') {
       include 'junit.framework.Test*'
   }
}

For a more advanced path matching you might want to use Regular Expressions (opens new window) instead. Wrap the expresion in %regex[] before passing it to include/exclude.

// Configuring Filtering for Relocation with Regex
tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
   relocate('org.foo', 'a') {
       include '%regex[org/foo/.*Factory[0-9].*]'
   }
}

# Automatically Relocating Dependencies

Shadow is shipped with a task that can be used to automatically configure all packages from all dependencies to be relocated. This feature was formally shipped into a 2nd plugin (com.github.johnrengelman.plugin-shadow) but has been removed for clarity reasons in version 4.0.0.

To configure automatic dependency relocation, set enableRelocation true and optionally specify a custom relocationPrefix to override the default value of "shadow".

// Configure Auto Relocation
import com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar

tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
    enableRelocation true
    relocationPrefix "myapp"
}

In versions before 8.1.0 it was necessary to configure a separate ConfigureShadowRelocation task for this.

Configuring package auto relocation can add significant time to the shadow process as it will process all dependencies in the configurations declared to be shadowed. By default, this is the runtime or runtimeClasspath configurations. Be mindful that some Gradle plugins will automatically add dependencies to your class path. You may need to remove these dependencies if you do not intend to shadow them into your library.

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