Why does a release build complain about a missing debug library?
In order to verify that a release version of an app uses only the release components, I deleted the debug variants of some externally-built libraries, and then tried building the release version of the app. The build variant 'release" is selected, yet the build stops immediately with this error: 'Expecting a file or a directory: theLibrary-debug.aar'.
When theLibrary-debug.aar is present, the release version of the app builds fine, and shows up in its correct place. The app behaves correctly, with release variants in behavior also, so it appears that the build completes correctly, and that the debug library isn't used.
So why does the release build complain about the missing debug library? Is this a normal build behavior in Android Studio (version 4.1.1) or does this require further investigation?
With the names changed, the relevant parts of the app's build.gradle look like this:
...
android {
...
buildTypes {
release {
...
}
debug {
...
}
}
...
}
dependencies {
debugImplementation files ('theLibrary-debug.aar')
releaseImplementation files ('theLibrary-release.aar')
}
P.S. The Module Settings view in Android Studio is awful, and it only makes sense to work in the gradle files, as far as I can see. Any one of the many Eclipse IDEs out there does this sort of settings work much better. Maybe some of the more recent Android Studio versions have some improvements...
I'm refactoring my current build.gradle to support both amazon and googleplay apks.
For that I've created 2 productFlavors (amazon and googleplay), so I can set some different dependancies and manifest.xml for each flavor.
During this refactor I came to an understanding that my current gradle didn't work well.
My goal is to get 4 build variants: debug/release-amazon/googlplay.apk.
When I build a debug I want only the current active ABI to be built, but if it's a release build , build all ABIs APKs.
I succeeded to get those variants. But build only current active ABI on debug only, doesn't work for me, because I couldn't get the value of active ABI from gradle.
I couldn't find this information on "Active ABI" on the internet, so this is why I'm asking here.
I am using Jenkins for CI for my Android Project.
There I am having two build, QA and Dev.
For both some of the configurations are different like url and all which i have in my adroid project.
Now my task is to provide some variable in jenkins, and according to that variable only that apk should be built with required config only. Like if i apply for QA build, so only apk with QA config should be generated.
Is there any way to achieve this?
As far as I understand you have 2 flavors in your gradle file, QA and DEV.
If that is the case you can do that from the configuration of your Job.
In Jenkins go to your Job and then to Configurations
Go to the "Build" section and then to task.
That is a textField where you can define which flavor to compile, for example if you want QA you can define the task:
assembleQARelease
and for DEV
assembleDEVRelease
In the same way you can define if instead of Release version you want the Debug version or if you create any other flavor for your app just Change QA or DEV for this new one.
Also you can add another task before as Clean or even you can define the 3 of them
clean
assembleQARelease
assembleDEVRelease
It will clean the project then create the QA release version and then DEV release.
I have a project with three different build types: debug, beta, and release. My test package is always created for debug builds, but QA uses the beta build and we want QA to run these tests on their vast array of devices.
I'm trying to create a testing apk for QA that is signed by the same key as the beta build. Looking through the Android-Gradle documentation, I don't see anything telling me that I can't do this, but I don't see anyway to configure this. Is there anyway I can configure which keystore is used when assembling a test apk? Or is there a way to create an unsigned test apk?
You can now point this to a different target, I don't know when this happened, but from the docs:
Currently only one Build Type is tested. By default it is the debug
Build Type, but this can be reconfigured with:
android {
...
testBuildType "staging"
}
This is an incomplete answer to your question in that it documents what you can't do, but the connectedAndroidTest task, which is what runs the androidTest tests in your project, is hardcoded to run against the debug build type, and I don't see a way to point it at a different build type.
Taking the advice from Is there a way to list task dependencies in Gradle? and examining the task dependency tree, if you run:
./gradlew tasks --all
you get this in your output:
Verification tasks
------------------
app:check - Runs all checks. [app:lint]
app:connectedAndroidTest - Installs and runs the tests for Build 'debug' on connected devices. [app:assembleDebug, app:assembleDebugTest]
app:connectedCheck - Runs all device checks on currently connected devices. [app:connectedAndroidTest]
app:deviceCheck - Runs all device checks using Device Providers and Test Servers.
The documentation for the connectedAndroidTest task claims it runs tests against debug, and the task dependencies (which you see with the -all flag) confirm that the task depends on assembleDebug.
Adding additional build types and flavors doesn't seem to affect the dependency on the built-in debug type.
It's possible that with greater Gradle-fu than mine, you could rewire the tasks to make the tests depend on a different build type, but doing this is likely to be fragile since it's bound to depend on things that aren't supported API in the Android Gradle plugin.
To answer your question most directly, though, if all you want is to run tests against a build with a different certificate, you could change the signing config on your debug build to use the beta certificate:
android {
signingConfigs {
beta {
keyAlias 'key'
keyPassword 'password'
storeFile file('/path/to/beta_keystore.jks')
storePassword 'password'
}
}
buildTypes {
debug {
signingConfig signingConfigs.beta
}
beta {
signingConfig signingConfigs.beta
}
}
}
I tested it and I am able to run androidTest targets against debug builds that use a custom keystore in this way. However, I doubt this solves your problem, because I suspect you want to run your tests against the beta build, not a debug build with the beta certificate.
To add a testing source set for your build variant, follow these steps:
In the Project window on the left, click the drop-down menu and
select the Project view.
Within the appropriate module folder,
right-click the src folder and click New > Directory.
For the directory name, enter "androidTestVariantName." For example,
if you have a build variant called "MyFlavor" then the directory name
shoulbe "androidTestMyFlavor." Then click OK.
Right-click on the new directory and click New > Directory. Enter
"java" as the directory name, and then click OK.
Now you can add tests to this new source set by following the steps above to add a new test. When you reach the Choose Destination Directory dialog, select the new variant test source set.
The instrumented tests in src/androidTest/ source set are shared by all build variants. When building a test APK for the "MyFlavor" variant of your app, Gradle combines both the src/androidTest/ and src/androidTestMyFlavor/ source sets.
Another way is to put following line your in default config.
Currently only one Build Type is tested. By default it is the debug Build Type, but this can be reconfigured with:
android {
...
testBuildType "staging"
}
When I use the 'gradlew connectedCheck' command it always build the debug version and test against the debug version of my app. Is it also possible to test against the release version of my app?
I want to enable proguard and want to make sure that it doesn't filter anything out that is needed during runtime.
You can only test against a single build type right now (though that may change).
To set the build type to test against:
android {
testBuildType "release"
}
You could set this dynamically through a env var to not have to edit build.gradle all the time.