Upgrade Nativescript gradle version to the latest

[NickIliev]

From @RVEIII on February 1, 2018 19:40

Did you verify this is a real problem by searching the NativeScript Forum and the other open issues in this repo?

I searched for Gradle issues and read a lot of them. It did not answer my question/problem.

Tell us about the problem

I have an application that uses a plugin that depends on a few Android libraries from an external source. Those libraries were compiled with Java 8, Android Gradle Plugin 3.0.1, and Gradle 4.4. The min sdk is 21 and the target is 27.

In my nativescript app, I can get those library dependencies brought into the apk by putting them in my plugin's include.gradle. The issue though is that when I build the app I get this error:

Dex: Error converting bytecode to dex:
Cause: Dex cannot parse version 52 byte code.
This is caused by library dependencies that have been compiled using Java 8 or above.
If you are using the 'java' gradle plugin in a library submodule add
targetCompatibility = '1.7'
sourceCompatibility = '1.7'

This error is remedied by using the Jack compiler option in my app.gradle and the source and target compatibility set to Java 1.8:

android {
  compileSdkVersion 27
  defaultConfig {  
...
    minSdkVersion 24
    jackOptions {
        enabled true
    }
  }  
  aaptOptions {  
    additionalParameters "--no-version-vectors"
  }
  
  compileOptions.with {
      sourceCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
      targetCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
  }
} 

I have a requirement to be able to support this app on sdk 21+. But due to the use of the Jack compiler option, it won't allow me to use anything before 24. I would not have this issue if I could use a newer version of gradle to build the Nativescript app. It seems that Nativescript uses 2.3.3. But I need 3+.

Is there a way to change this? I tried with a classpath dependency but the issue there is that the build.gradle file that gets generated for platforms/android has methods in it that are no longer available in Gradle 3. I need to be able to use the latest version of the Android Gradle plugin to build my app.

Which platform(s) does your issue occur on?

Android

Please provide the following version numbers that your issue occurs with:

• CLI: 3.4.0
• Cross-platform modules: 3.4.0
• Runtime(s): 3.4.1
• Plugin(s): My plugin uses 3.4.0 cross platform.

Please tell us how to recreate the issue in as much detail as possible.

Build a Nativescript app for Android and see that Gradle 2.3.3 is used.

Copied from original issue: NativeScript/NativeScript#5370

[Plamen5kov]

Hi @RVEIII,
If I understand correctly you need the tns-android project template to use the android plugin for gradle - version 3.x instead of 2.3.3. We haven't planned on updating because we hadn't a reason to do so, but we'll investigate.

[RVEIII]

Hi @Plamen5kov,

Thank you for looking into this. This is actually a huge issue for the project I'm on. Is there any indication yet of a time frame you are planning to have a fix for this in?

We currently have an iOS application that customers are using and are porting it to Android. We have a lot of UI elements that come from external libs that we are using in via plugin. The issue we're having is that we cannot get the app to run consistently consuming these .aar files. This seems to be because they are built with Android Studio and have a newer version of gradle that supports Java 8...but I can't truly confirm that.

Our project setup is that we have our own library project that depends on those external libraries to build. Then we have those set as compile dependencies in the include.gradle in our plugin's platforms/android/ directory alongside our library's .aar file. But pretty much every time I run the project I get a crash with this(I've hidden our info...but you get the point):

02-05 22:22:33.806 21873-21873/? A/libc: /usr/local/google/buildbot/src/android/ndk-r15-release/external/libcxx/../../external/libcxxabi/src/abort_message.cpp:74: void abort_message(const char *, ...): assertion "terminating with uncaught exception of type tns::NativeScriptException" failed
02-05 22:22:33.806 21873-21873/? A/libc: Fatal signal 6 (SIGABRT), code -6 in tid 21873 (AppName), pid 21873 (AppName)
02-05 22:22:33.832 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
02-05 22:22:33.833 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: Build fingerprint: 'google/sdk_gphone_x86/generic_x86:8.1.0/OSM2.171116.002/4458339:userdebug/dev-keys'
02-05 22:22:33.833 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: Revision: '0'
02-05 22:22:33.833 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: ABI: 'x86'
02-05 22:22:33.833 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: pid: 21873, tid: 21873, name: AppName  >>> com.xyz.ourapp.AppName <<<
02-05 22:22:33.833 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: signal 6 (SIGABRT), code -6 (SI_TKILL), fault addr --------
02-05 22:22:33.835 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: Abort message: '/usr/local/google/buildbot/src/android/ndk-r15-release/external/libcxx/../../external/libcxxabi/src/abort_message.cpp:74: void abort_message(const char *, ...): assertion "terminating with uncaught exception of type tns::NativeScriptException" failed'
02-05 22:22:33.835 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     eax 00000000  ebx 00005571  ecx 00005571  edx 00000006
02-05 22:22:33.835 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     esi b0caa638  edi 00005571
02-05 22:22:33.835 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     xcs 00000073  xds 0000007b  xes 0000007b  xfs 0000003b  xss 0000007b
02-05 22:22:33.835 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     eip b4d22ac4  ebp bfeca194  esp bfeca138  flags 00000286
02-05 22:22:33.837 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG: backtrace:
02-05 22:22:33.837 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     #00 pc 00000ac4  [vdso:b4d22000] (__kernel_vsyscall+16)
02-05 22:22:33.837 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     #01 pc 0001edf8  /system/lib/libc.so (syscall+40)
02-05 22:22:33.837 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     #02 pc 0001f073  /system/lib/libc.so (abort+115)
02-05 22:22:33.838 21901-21901/? A/DEBUG:     #03 pc 0001f528  /system/lib/libc.so (__assert2+56)

I have gotten it to work a handful of times by removing all of the plugin libs, building(which crashes because the plugin code is not available), then reinstalling the plugin and rebuilding without deleting platforms/android first.

Here is our app.gradle:

dependencies {
  compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:27.0.2'
}

android {
  compileSdkVersion 27
  defaultConfig {  
    generatedDensities = []
    applicationId = "com.our.app"
    // TODO: Try to get this down to 21.  Needing to use the Jack-Compiler(Deprecated) seems
    // to have caused us to need version 24
    minSdkVersion 24
    jackOptions {
        enabled true
    }
  }  
  aaptOptions {  
    additionalParameters "--no-version-vectors"
  }
  
  compileOptions.with {
      sourceCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
      targetCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
  }
} 

repositories {
    google()
    jcenter()
}

and our include.gradle for our plugin:

android {
    productFlavors {
        "plugin-name" {
            dimension "plugin-name"
        }
    }
    compileOptions.with {
        sourceCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }
}

dependencies {
    compile 'com.lib1.we.are.using:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT'
    compile 'com.lib2.we.are.using:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT'
}

repositories {
    maven { url "(snapshot remote)" }
    google()
}

[Plamen5kov]

Hi, @RVEIII
I updated gradle to 4.1 and the android plugin to 3.0.1 in this branch containing most of the changes for 4.0 release.
Expect these changes in 4.0 release around mid-March.

[RVEIII]

@Plamen5kov - That's great news. Thanks! I'm trying to build this now but I'm having a bit of trouble. What's the best way to generate the android-runtime and use it with our own application? The build instructions for this seems to be building a test application.

[petekanev]

@RVEIII following the build instructions (executing ./gradlew in the terminal) will produce a resulting .tgz npm package in android-runtime/dist which you can then use in your application as follows:

tns platform add android --framework-path path-to/android-runtime/dist/tns-android-version.tgz

[RVEIII]

@Pip3r4o and @Plamen5kov, this seemed to fix our build issues. There is one problem with the change though. When I build and then try to run the client via tns run android, it give the following error:

Unable to apply changes on device: emulator-5554. Error is: No .apk found in /user_path.../platforms/android/app/build/outputs/apk directory.

The apk exists in a subfolder of that with the format flavor/debug/app-(flavor name)-debug.apk.

I tried copying that apk to the build/outputs/apk directory and it still didn't pick it up. So I just verified the apk by using adb.

Can you please look into the issue with the apk location? Also, is there any way we could get some sort of snapshot to use with this in it? We are looking to start serious Android development soon and would like a stable build to use until 4.0 is released.

Thanks a lot for the quick responses and fixes!