For 1.7.10 or any other version. Pretty much the title. In the interests of disclosure, I asked this question last year.

 

For personal use, I'm playing with expanding a data type. In the process, I've ended up changing something that was stored as a byte to a short, and storing it as two bytes, which necessitates a new function to set the upper byte.

 

To make sure that it's working properly, I'd like to build a preexisting mod against the modified version of Forge, using a couple functions I have added to support that change.

 

How can I build an existing mod (or even a new one) against this edited copy of Forge?

 

I don't know enough about Gradle to go digging around in the files to see, and I'd prefer to avoid reading several thousand lines worth of ForgeGradle code for questionable return if there's an easier way.

 

If that's not possible, is there at least a way to replace the userdev jar that would otherwise be downloaded from the Forge Maven repository with (the modified) one that's stored locally?

You should not be editing forge/minecraft directly if why would you need to build it, no one will be able to use your mod as they would beed the modified version anyway. If you want a feature added to forge then submit a pull request on their github 0age with the code.

Developing for 1.7.10 is not supported. Update.

Beyond this 'expanding data types' is a rats nest that isn't worth going down.

Looking at your old posts, there is no reason you need to expand biome ids. There are only ever 256 possible biomes per chunk. Fits perfectly in a byte.