Develop Reference

Android App Compile Not Generating Package Resources

When attempting to compile my Xamarin.Android app I get the compile error:
Error 3 The file "obj\Debug\android\bin\packaged_resources" does not exist. MyApp.UI.Droid
This error occurred after I made some changes (added some new classes - cannot remember what it was). But I didn't change any project settings, nor go delete actual files in the obj folder.
What is the cause of this error and how can I fix this?
Some information that may be useful:
The project is a Cross-Platform PCL project - Core, Android, and iOS Projects
The project uses MVVM Cross

I encountered the same issue. Ensure that your resource files do not include any special characters
The actual error you may be encountering is:
Invalid file name: must contain only [a-z0-9_.]
Change your build output verbosity in visual studio to see better log output.

I´ve had the same issue.
Then i´ve reviewed my resource file names.
Solution:
One file was using "-" in it´s name. (invalid character)
Then i replaced for "_" (underline).
PS:
=> file name: must contain only [a-z0-9_.]

You will need to grub down by switching on Verbose output. What is stopping the generation of packaged_resources?
In VS2013 choose Tools --> Options --> Build and execute, choose verbosity Diagnostic.
In VS2015, the same option is in Tools --> Options --> Projects and Solutions --> Build and Run.
In my case, it was a hyphen character in the name of the action property of an Intent filter, but choosing verbose output will point you to the line that has the problem.

Follow the steps below to identify the problem:
1 - In Visual Studio: Tools> Options> Projects and solutions> Build and Run.
1.1 - In the dropdown: MSBuild project build output verbosity:> Diagnostic.
1.2 - Close the dialog box.
2 - View> Output (Ctrl + W, O).
3 - Run the build or rebuild.
In the output find the line:
C:\Program Files
(x86)\MSBuild\Xamarin\Android\Xamarin.Android.Common.targets(1665,3):
error MSB6006: "aapt.exe" exited with code 1.
What is just above this error is what caused the error.

i also found that removing the packages in Tools/Preview Channel and Android N AND ALSO Android SDK Build Tools rev 24, done a build and worked.. This is a complete new portable project/android/ios

Another possibility is you have an issue with the installed Android SDK build tools. For me, when I removed the package for Revision 24 it worked.

From Xamarin Forums:
First of all go and deinstall preview tools in your android sdk
manager. If you havent installed it but still get the same error then
go and deinstall Android SDK Build Tools Rev. 24.
The Problem we have here is that, if you have Appcombat, RecyclerView
or something like that in your project, the library rev of these
librarys are below rev 24. They are still on 23.2.1 but not on rev 24.
So if you installed Build-Tools Rev 24 and want to build your project
the build cant find the rev24 resource package of your librarys.
You can check it on your own Go in the SDK Manager and check "Obsolete" Then go to the folder Extras and there you can see
"Android Support Library (Obsolete) Rev 23.2.1. And then check if
there is Android Support Library Rev 24 in your Extras Folder. No? And
thats the Problem here. We got the Update for Build Tools to early and
have to wait for Library Update. Then we all can use Build Tools 24!
So only update to BuildTools Rev 24 when we got an update for support librarys and have the rev24 librarys.

Basically the problem is with special character of Resource FILE NAME.
In my case, I am keep getting error "The file "obj\Debug\android\bin\packaged_resources" does not exist.":
..\Resources\drawable\company-app-log.png having -(hyphen) between alpha characters is the root-cause of the issue.

Using Xamarin Studio here -
Sometimes this is caused by AXML errors.
Which if you turn on detailed / diagnostic in preferences you can
search the build output (or your packaging output) for the word ERROR.
For example, somebody checked in some AXML line(s) with -
android:Text="something"
and the uppercase T was causing this error -
Resources/layout/Somefile.axml(11): error APT0000: No resource identifier found for attribute 'Text' in package 'android'
Fixing the errors fixed the original message.

Firstly, i suggest you change "show out put from" Build to Xamarin to see the real error and its details as seen in my case
At first
And then
please make sure you installed your NDK properly. That was the issue with mine,
and please make sure the NDK directory is also set
hope this helps someone

I just lost 7 hours of my day.. You know what I did?
Project.Droid -> Resources -> RightClick on the Resource.Designer.cs -> Delete
I did fu****n' works ! ><
EDIT
Omg it did comes back... Why does Windows has all time so much of bugs... seriously..

Same annoying problem with me!
But I found a solution: read carefully this article:
https://gxconsultancy.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/to-use-xamarin-or-not-to-us-xamarin/
In short:
Make sure you have JDK 32bits version 8 at least - same for the JRE, included in the JDK installation kit from Oracle;
Set your project for using the Xamarin debugger (right-click your project, hit Properties / Android Options / Packaging / Debugger);
And now the most weird: delete the app/Resources/drawable folder; have a working Xamarin project and copy its "drawable" folders to the erratic project (usually there are several subfolders, like drawable-hdpi, drawable-mdpi and so fort).
Rebuild your Android project.

I had the problem so I deleted build-tools 24.0.0 and I used build-tools 23.0.3 and the problem solved. Try it!

make sure that your resources don't have any special character or start with number

Encountered same issue in VS 2015 and Xamarin 7.2.0.7. In my case, the issue happened just suddenly, and turned out the issue caused by wrong element name in axml, traced using Tiago's answers above.
So I didn't find the line Tiago mentioned with aapt.exe, but I then I tried to search for keyword failed in output. Then I found one telling me about margin. In android, margin is set using android:layout_margin. I played with element and forgot and put android:margin instead, thus also why it happened so sudden after so many successful run. Fixed it and the build succeeded.

In my case the error was caused because I set the version number in the manifest to 1.0. Apparently the version number must be an integer.

Had the same problem. My error was in the manifest: I had Version Code (Version number) set at "1.0.0" and it wasn't allowed. It only takes integers so I had to revert to "1".
I mixed up Version Code and Version Name.

For me this error was caused by having an invalid attribute value in a layout xml. I had
android:id="button"
changing it to
android:id="#+id/button"
fixed the error.

Not sure if this is a late answer, but this specific error message occurs for one of the two reasons:
(Most probably the case): In your layout file, you may have mentioned a resource (drawable/image) incorrectly. For example, the image was in the mipmap folder path but you have pointed it wrongly to the drawable folder path.
Per many comments, there could be a hyphen or special character in one your resources' names or it starts with a number. However, please note, in this specific case, you will mostly see a aapt.exe has stopped or appt.exe has exited with error code 1 error. I am not sure if you will get obj\Debug\android\bin\packaged_resources not found error. My experience says that point 1 above is the case.

Got this error in Visual Studio 2017 Xamarin android project on Windows.
After lot of experiments with resource's files I found, that filename length and extension of image file in the drawable folder affect the result of compillation!
drawable/abcde.png - compilled ok
drawable/abcdef.png - error, "obj\Debug\android\bin\packaged_resources" does not exist
If rename image to file without .png extension, compilled without errors.
Spended a lot of time and was confused :-/

I had the same problem. To solve I had to remove all nuget packages from droid project, and reinstalled xamarin.forms again (has to be same version used in other projects).

had the same issue. This was because i had an .png file that had a "-" character in it's name. Just enusure any of your resources don't have the "-" hyphen character

Unity3D Command line Build not accessing libraries and updating Android Manifest

I have a unity project with multiple android plugins.
The plugins are placed in the recommended folders /Assets/Plugins/Android/NameOfPlugin and each have their own AndroidManifest.xml and .project file.
I also have an AndroidManifest.xml in /Assets/Plugins/Android
When building out a .apk from any of the dev machines in studio, the AndroidManifest is correctly compiled into a single .xml file containing all required activities.
However, when building on a Mac Mini via commandline this does not happen. The AndroidManifest.xml is missing required code and the app doesn't work.
I have done fresh installs of everything, tried different configurations, loads of things but to no avail. Anyone have any ideas as to what might be going wrong?

One of Dan's colleagues here, and after doing a straight up text diff on the two "Editor.log" files of Unity's editor, there was one glaring line that was missing from the broken builder,
DisplayProgressbar: Android Library Support
Googling that lead me to http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/792979/android-library-support-build-issue.html who had already discovered the answer, which was damn near exactly the same as what we had suffered,
It appears having a "." in the name of a directory on the build path results in failure of the android-libraries to be correctly found and added to the StagingArea.
Moving our repository on the Autobuilder from ~/.jenkins/workspace/game_project to ~/game_project fixed the issue.
We've just done the same ourselves, and it's solved the issue.

Error executing aapt: Return code 132 problems

Since updating my Android SDK about a month ago I've had endless problems leaving me with a non-functional development environment.
Initially the problem was with the v7-appcompat support library which threw up about 100 errors relating to various resources. It was fairly obvious they were resources relating to Android v5 and a quick search on Stack Overflow meant I realised the v7-appcompat library was targeting API 19. Changing the relevant settings to target API 21 fixed the resource errors.
However, the problem I've had since then is any attempt to build the library project quickly finishes with...
Error executing aapt: Return code 132
...and the library project isn't built correctly.
My original setup was with Eclipse Kepler but then I tried Android Studio v1.0.1 (same aapt error code) and today I installed Eclipse Luna to a separate directory from Kepler AND a fresh installation of ADT and SDK. Each version of Eclipse also have their own workspaces.
So basically I have two versions of Eclipse (each with their own ADT / SDK setups and workspaces) and Android Studio with its own directory structure and all three exhibit the same problem.
The question is, how do I go about diagnosing this issue? The common denominator is obviously an aapt issue but I have no idea how to fix it.
I'm running on a Debian Wheezy (32-bit) setup and I've got Java 1.7 installed correctly (as recommended).

There seems to be an issue with aapt on some 32 bit systems. It throws an error 132 on app:processDebugResources which is when aapt is 'crunching' png files ready for inclusion in the apk package. You can see more details at https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=75110
Some people have reported that 'fixing' the offending png files (e.g. by opening in Gimp and saving) sorts the problem. When they are 'built in' to appcompat it's much harder to do of course.
Before getting into detail can you just say if you are indeed running on a 32 bit processor, and if so which one? use lscpu to find out.
OK, if anyone is interested, here is a work around so you can use your old laptop to build apps with Android Studio. Basically you strip all the png files in the appcompat-v7 library and then do a build using two versions of aapt. Yuk.
Find the appcompat-v7.aar which will be somewhere like ~/Android/Sdk/extras/android/m2repository/com/android/support/appcompat-v7/22.0.0
Extract it (it's a zip file really) to a temporary directory
Strip all the png files: find . -name "*.png" -exec mogrify -strip {} \;
Pack the files back up again: pushd appcompat-v7-22.0.0; zip -r ../appcompat-v7-22.0.0.aar; popd
Move the new aar file to replace the original (that may be enough to get a good build but it wasn't for me)
Now find an old version of aapt (I went to https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/build-tools_r17-linux.zip)
Copy the version of aapt from the zip you've just picked up into the Android/Sdk/build-tools directory as aapt-17 or whatever
Rename the original aapt to aapt-0
Alternate between the two versions of aapt (e.g. ln -sf aapt-17 aapt) and you should find you can get a good build. One version will fail in one place, the other in another, getting you past all the bumps.
I know it stinks but I was desperate!!

Here's what I did, which is enough to get a successful build. Inspired by peterthevicar's answer.
downgrade sdk to 19.1.0, you can install it from studio and then change buildToolsVersion in build.gradle
rename aapt to aapt.bin and put a shell script in its place that intercepts just the png crunch (args: s -i infile -o outfile) and does a simple cp instead. would paste it here but SO's syntax highlighting suuuucks

Environment variable in settings.gradle not working with Android Studio

I do have a multi-module project with a library project in a different root path. As illustration you can imagine something like this:
/projects_home/projects/app_root
|--app/
| |--build.gradle
|--build.gradle
|--settings.gradle
/libraries_home/libraries
|--libA
|--build.gradle
In my settings.gradle file I am able to set the absolute path to the library project utilizing the projectDir attribute. This works just fine within the console as well as with Android Studio.
But if I try to use an environment variable it stops working with Android Studio. The settings.gradle for the example above would look like this:
include ':app'
include ':libA'
project(':libA').projectDir = new File("$System.env.LIB_ROOT", '/libraries/libA')
If I build with the graddle wrapper from the console, it still works. But AS stops working with the following error msg:
Gradle 'app' project refresh failed:
Configuration with name 'default' not found.
If I unset the environment variable, the build on console fails with the same msg:
* What went wrong:
A problem occurred configuring project ':app'.
> Configuration with name 'default' not found.
Therefore I guess that AS is somehow not be able to access the environment variables set with my ~/.bashrc
Does somebody of you maybe know a way how I can make AS aware of my environment?

Android Studio does read the environment variables. You can prove it by launching Android Studio from the shell in which those env. variables being specified instead of from X-window dash board.
The reason you did not have those variables is the X-window environment you were using did not read $HOME/.bashrc which contained those variables. This makes sense because bashrc is for Bash not X.
Assuming you are using GNOME or Unity, to launch Android Studio with those environment variables being specified, just modify the .desktop file of Android Studio (e.g. ~/.local/share/applications/android-studio.desktop):
Find this line:
Exec="/home/username/tools/android/android-studio/bin/studio.sh" %f
Change it to:
Exec=env LIB_ROOT=/libraries_home "/home/username/tools/android/android-studio/bin/studio.sh" %f
Note:
This modification just prepend env LIB_ROOT=/libraries_home to the original command. You must replace username with your own user name.
Update
If you have any questions, please leave a comment instead of editing the answer directly.

On Macs, Android Studio does not read environment variables for use in Gradle apparently. I believe this is the cause for confusion in the answers here - maybe it does on Windows.
In order to get Android Studio to read environment variables, I run the application from the command line:
> /Applications/Android\ Studio.app/Contents/MacOS/studio
The other answers here offer solutions other than using environment variables. For my situation, I'm using a library I didn't write that requires the use of an environment variable, and I'd rather not edit their code so it's easier to update later.
EDIT: And, I have a dock icon to launch Android Studio this way:
OSX: Add Dock icon for dedicated Terminal command explains how.

Android Studio doesn't read environment variables, so this approach won't work. Also, using the projectDir scheme in settings.gradle will probably cause problems. Android Studio has a limitation that all of its modules need to be located underneath the project root. If you have libraries that are used in multiple projects and they can't be placed under a single project root, the best advice is to have them publish JARs or AARs to a local Maven repository that individual projects can pick up.

Despite the answer from Scott Barta is correct, I realized there is a way to solve my problem and wan't to share this in case somebody else has the same requirement.
I am now using the gradle.properties file do define and use gradle properties instead of system properties. The documentation of this feature can be fined in the user guide
The solution to my original question now looks like this:
$USER_HOME/.gradle/gradle.properties:
LIB_ROOT=/libraries_home
The settings.gradle file has to be modified to use the gradle property instead of the system property:
include ':app'
include ':libA'
project(':libA').projectDir = new File(LIB_ROOT, '/libraries/libA')
This works fine for me, headless as well as with AS.
Some more words regarding the fact that I am working with modules which are not placed underneath one project root. Till now it looks like AS is not complaining about this. But I just started working with this structure and it may be that I will run into problems later. What I like about this is the more flat representation in AS which is more like I am used to have it with Eclipse.
What is also described in the user guide, is to set system properties with the gradle.properties file. I tried this also, but I did run into the same problems with AS using environment variables.

It works for me with the following steps:
Set your variable in Windows
Reboot
reach it in gradle build: System.env.MYVARIABLE

I faced the same issue in apple laptop after the Android Studio Bumblebee update. This seems to be happening due to some permission issue with the Android Studio.
The workaround is to add missing flag:
chmod +x /Applications/Android\ Studio.app/Contents/bin/printenv
You can check this issue tracker for more details.

You can set environment variable by appending:
-DYOUR_VARIABLE=variable_value
to ~/Library/Preferences/AndroidStudioX.X/studio.vmoptions that you can open by selecting Help -> Edit Custom VM Options... from Android Studio menu.
And then you can use it like:
System.env.YOUR_VARIABLE
in build.gradle or settings.gradle.

MAC OS Update
I confirm that I have Environmental Variables working on Mac OS Catalina
You just need to set it in the shell you are using. I was using zsh, and was trying to set ~/.bash_profile, so it wasn't working.
Example:
ZSH Profile

AAPT failing with error code -1073741819

Building the project throws the following error from AAPT. I've rebuilt the project, but it is still failing. I can't find any references anywhere to what this error code actually means. I'm using Java 6, and Android tools r19 in IntelliJ with ActionBarSherlock v4.1.0.
I/O error: Command
"C:\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools\aapt.exe package -m --auto-add-overlay --extra-packages com.actionbarsherlock -J C:\Users\Ollie\.IntelliJIdea11\system\compiler\project6.b9f5599b\.generated\aapt\Project.9617c193\production -M C:/Users/Ollie/Documents/Dropbox/Tech/project6/Source/project6/AndroidManifest.xml -S C:/Users/Ollie/Documents/Dropbox/Tech/project6/Source/project6/res -S C:/Users/Ollie/Documents/Dropbox/Tech/project6/Source/actionbarsherlock/res -I C:\android-sdk-windows\platforms\android-14\android.jar"
execution failed with exit code -1073741819
This build failure started happening after I added a dependency from my project to the ActionBarSherlock library project. If I remove that dependency, the project builds fine. If I add it back, it fails again.

I had this problem under windows, I fixed it by removing a #+id in a style item definition in the styles.xml. I spoke to someone else who didn't know exactly why but had found using +id in style files to often cause problems.

Update Oct. 27, 2014 -
the problem is fixed with Android SDK Build-tools rel. 21.0.2, sigh of relief... Guess I'll leave the rest of this post as it was, in case someone with v. 21.0.1 runs into this problem, or if the bug returns in future releases of the tools. Maybe it'll save someone bunging head against a tool-bug wall, reviewing all other posts and their code for a whole day.
Original post from Oct. 18, 2014
A new twist on this old issue... Today, Oct. 18, 2014, after upgrading to just released Android SDK v. 21 on my Windows 7 computer, using aapt.exe from android-sdk\build-tools\21.01\ directory crashes each time with the same exit code -1073741819. Tried all the answers suggested in this thread before my post to no avail. Then just copied the old version of aapt.exe from 20.0.0 (also tried from 19.1.0 tools directory), and in each case it worked fine. No issues (just had to clean-rebuild the project with each version of aapt.exe tested).
Is aapt.exe for Windows, in Android SDK built tools version 21.0.1 broken? Does anyone else see this problem?
Greg

For anyone else experiencing this issue in Android Studio, this is how I solved it:
I copied the aapt.exe command that shows in the output window. For example:
C:\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools\aapt.exe package -m --auto-add-overlay --extra-packages com.actionbarsherlock -J C:\Users\Ollie\.IntelliJIdea11\system\compiler\project6.b9f5599b\.generated\aapt\Project.9617c193\production -M C:/Users/Ollie/Documents/Dropbox/Tech/project6/Source/project6/AndroidManifest.xml -S C:/Users/Ollie/Documents/Dropbox/Tech/project6/Source/project6/res -S C:/Users/Ollie/Documents/Dropbox/Tech/project6/Source/actionbarsherlock/res -I C:\android-sdk-windows\platforms\android-14\android.jar
At the end I appended the -v to the end of that command and ran it in a command prompt window. That switch turns on verbose logging. Eventually the command will fail, but the very last file that it attempts to package is the culprit. I suggest focusing your efforts on that file.

General solution to this problem lies in XML code. There is something in the XML code which is being pointed , but not present. In my case, a unreachable string causes this error.
<item android:title="#string/action_settings">
Due to some code merging, this string code deleted, and compiler is unable to find it.I changed it & whoop.. error is gone.
In most of the languages, 1073741819 error is usually thrown whenever there is problem accessing resources

Make sure all your #+id/... (in main.xml and others) are also registered in strings.xml.
The problem I had was that
<item android:id="#+id/menu_help" android:title="#string/menu_help"/> in my main.xml file was not defined in my strings.xml file.

Take a look at here.
It is related to Android Develop's second class, of adding action buttons.
It is simply that the drawable "ic_action_search" is not present. Well, it was the case for me.
The class links to Action bar icon pack where you can find your missing PNGs and add to your project.
Hope it helps,
SJ

I think aapt ErrorCode -1073741819 means Android resources are conflict or illegal.
Whenever I meet this error on android projects of others' or my own, I usually find required attributes in layout/xxx.xml are missing, or id, name attributes are conflicts in different layout/xxx.xml

I had the same problem in Eclipse.
Eclipse now and then shows up those kind of errors, a simple refresh in my project fixed that error for me.

Had the same problem.There was a reference inside an layout xml file pointing to an object that wasn't in the source code anymore.You probably should check your main layout files first.

I just faced this issue again. Previous time I was not able to found the reason of the error so I had to clear everything and carefully add files and resources one by one. But now I found another reason for this error. I used method provided here by Software.Developer but in my case the culprit was not the last line but penultimate line. It was a menu xml file and the problem was at the first line in this file. It was empty and the xml declaration
xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"
was placed at the second line. IntelliJ IDEA static analyzer doesn't highlight this error until you open the file and compiler just crash at the compilation. So make sure all of your xml files (layouts, styles, menus) have proper xml declarations placed at the first line of the file.

I fixed this with cleaning the project before compiling it again.
The error code I got is -1073741502 which is slightly different, but I think it's just the id that generated from previous build of aapt.

In my case problem was in my menu.xml. Look at this one:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
>
<item android:id="#+id/action_help"
android:title="#string/help"
android:orderInCategory="100"
app:showAsAction="never"
/>
</menu>
Renaming namespace for app:showAsAction from app to android solved this problem.
Here goes the right way
<item android:id="#+id/action_help"
android:title="#string/help"
android:orderInCategory="100"
android:showAsAction="never"
/>

One more resource problem - add formatting="false" to your strings which contain %s formatting characters.
See more at Android XML Percent Symbol

In my case (Android Studio on Windows 8.1) aapt would sometimes get stuck and every launch from command line would crash (but not when double-clicked in Explorer). When I terminated all cmd.exe and conhost.exe processes in Task Manager clean & build went just fine.

this error will be generated when your xml has some problems
but eclipse will not show real problem when Project>Build Automatically is checked
First thing you must do is to uncheck that option, Build All, and see problems window.
for me, I deleted a string from resources, but not its usage, so it takes 2 working days from me to find out what the problem is

Generally this error is observed due to some missing parameter or some syntax error in xml file.
You can refer the Messages view for gradle build.
There it states, which file is having error.
In my case, in one of the layout xml, there was some extra character.

Try removing the build tool with versions earlier than 19 from the android build tool folder, then install build tool 19 from the sdk manager, copy the lib folder and aapt.exe to platform-build folder.