Android Gradle plugin release notes

The Android Studio build system is based on Gradle, and the Android Gradle plugin adds several features that are specific to building Android apps. Although the Android plugin is typically updated in lock-step with Android Studio, the plugin (and the rest of the Gradle system) can run independent of Android Studio and be updated separately.

This page explains how to keep your Gradle tools up to date and what's in the recent updates.

For details about how to configure your Android builds with Gradle, see the following pages:

• Configure Your Build
• Android Plugin DSL Reference
• Gradle DSL Reference

For more information about the Gradle build system, see the Gradle user guide.

Update the Android Gradle plugin

When you update Android Studio, you may receive a prompt to automatically update the Android Gradle plugin to the latest available version. You can choose to accept the update or manually specify a version based on your project's build requirements.

You can specify the plugin version in either the File > Project Structure > Project menu in Android Studio, or the top-level build.gradle file. The plugin version applies to all modules built in that Android Studio project. The following example sets the plugin to version 3.5.1 from the build.gradle file:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        // Gradle 4.1 and higher include support for Google's Maven repo using
        // the google() method. And you need to include this repo to download
        // Android Gradle plugin 3.0.0 or higher.
        google()
        ...
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.5.1'
    }
}

Caution: You should not use dynamic dependencies in version numbers, such as 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.+'. Using this feature can cause unexpected version updates and difficulty resolving version differences.

If the specified plugin version has not been downloaded, Gradle downloads it the next time you build your project or click Tools > Android > Sync Project with Gradle Files from the Android Studio menu bar.

Update Gradle

When you update Android Studio, you may receive a prompt to also update Gradle to the latest available version. You can choose to accept the update or manually specify a version based on your project's build requirements.

The following table lists which version of Gradle is required for each version of the Android Gradle plugin. For the best performance, you should use the latest possible version of both Gradle and the plugin.

Plugin version	Required Gradle version
1.0.0 - 1.1.3	2.2.1 - 2.3
1.2.0 - 1.3.1	2.2.1 - 2.9
1.5.0	2.2.1 - 2.13
2.0.0 - 2.1.2	2.10 - 2.13
2.1.3 - 2.2.3	2.14.1+
2.3.0+	3.3+
3.0.0+	4.1+
3.1.0+	4.4+
3.2.0 - 3.2.1	4.6+
3.3.0 - 3.3.2	4.10.1+
3.4.0 - 3.4.1	5.1.1+
3.5.0+	5.4.1+

You can specify the Gradle version in either the File > Project Structure > Project menu in Android Studio, or by editing the Gradle distribution reference in the gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties file. The following example sets the Gradle version to 5.4.1 in the gradle-wrapper.properties file.

...
distributionUrl = https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-5.4.1-all.zip
...

3.5.0 (August 2019)

Android Gradle plugin 3.5.0, along with Android Studio 3.5, is a major release and a result of Project Marble, which is a focus on improving three main areas of the Android developer tools: system health, feature polish, and fixing bugs. Notably, improving project build speed was a main focus for this update.

For information about these and other Project Marble updates, read the Android Developers blog post or the sections below.

This version of the Android plugin requires the following:

• Gradle 5.4.1 or higher. To learn more, read the section about updating Gradle.

• SDK Build Tools 28.0.3 or higher.

Incremental annotation processing

The Data Binding annotation processor supports incremental annotation processing if you set android.databinding.incremental=true in your gradle.properties file. This optimization results in improved incremental build performance. For a full list of optimized annotation processors, refer to the table of incremental annotation processors.

Additionally, KAPT 1.3.30 and higher also support incremental annotation processors, which you can enable by including kapt.incremental.apt=true in your gradle.properties file.

Cacheable unit tests

When you enable unit tests to use Android resources, assets, and manifests by setting includeAndroidResources to true, the Android Gradle plugin generates a test config file containing absolute paths, which breaks cache relocatability. You can instruct the plugin to instead generate the test config using relative paths, which allows the AndroidUnitTest task to be fully cacheable, by including the following in your gradle.properties file:

android.testConfig.useRelativePath = true

Known issues

• When using Kotlin Gradle plugin 1.3.31 or earlier, you might see the following warning when building or syncing your project:

  WARNING: API 'variant.getPackageLibrary()' is obsolete and has been replaced
           with 'variant.getPackageLibraryProvider()'.
  

  To resolve this issue, upgrade the plugin to version 1.3.40 or higher.

3.4.0 (April 2019)

This version of the Android plugin requires the following:

• Gradle 5.1.1 or higher. To learn more, read the section about updating Gradle.

• SDK Build Tools 28.0.3 or higher.

New features

• New lint check dependency configurations: The behavior of lintChecks has changed and a new dependency configuration, lintPublish, has been introduced to give you more control over which lint checks are packaged in your Android libraries.

  • lintChecks: This is an existing configuration that you should use for lint checks you want to only run when building your project locally. If you were previously using the lintChecks dependency configuration to include lint checks in the published AAR, you need to migrate those dependencies to instead use the new lintPublish configuration described below.
  • lintPublish: Use this new configuration in library projects for lint checks you want to include in the published AAR, as shown below. This means that projects that consume your library also apply those lint checks.

  The following code sample uses both dependency configurations in a local Android library project.

  dependencies {
    // Executes lint checks from the ':lint' project at build time.
    lintChecks project(':lint')
    // Packages lint checks from the ':lintpublish' in the published AAR.
    lintPublish project(':lintpublish')
  }
  

• In general, packaging and signing tasks should see an overall build speed improvement. If you notice a performance regression related to these tasks, please report a bug.

Behavior changes

• Android Instant Apps Feature plugin deprecation warning: If you’re still using the com.android.feature plugin to build your instant app, Android Gradle plugin 3.4.0 will give throw you a deprecation warning. To make sure you can still build you instant app on future versions of the plugin, migrate your instant app to using the dynamic feature plugin, which also allows you to publish both your installed and instant app experiences from a single Android App Bundle.

• R8 enabled by default: R8 integrates desugaring, shrinking, obfuscating, optimizing, and dexing all in one step—resulting in noticeable build performance improvements. R8 was introduced in Android Gradle plugin 3.3.0 and is now enabled by default for both app and Android library projects using plugin 3.4.0 and higher.

  The image below provides a high-level overview of the compile process before R8 was introduced.

  

  Now, with R8, desugaring, shrinking, obfuscating, optimizing, and dexing (D8) are all completed in one step, as illustrated below.

  

  Keep in mind, R8 is designed to work with your existing ProGuard rules, so you’ll likely not need to take any actions to benefit from R8. However, because it’s a different technology to ProGuard that’s designed specifically for Android projects, shrinking and optimization may result in removing code that ProGuard may have not. So, in this unlikely situation, you might need to add additional rules to keep that code in your build output.

  If you experience issues using R8, read the R8 compatibility FAQ to check if there’s a solution to your issue. If a solution isn’t documented, please report a bug. You can disable R8 by adding one of the following lines to your project’s gradle.properties file:

  # Disables R8 for Android Library modules only.
  android.enableR8.libraries = false
  # Disables R8 for all modules.
  android.enableR8 = false
  

• ndkCompile is deprecated: You now get a build error if you try to use ndkBuild to compile your native libraries. You should instead use either CMake or ndk-build to Add C and C++ code to your project.

Known issues

• The correct usage of unique package names are currently not enforced but will become more strict on later versions of the plugin. On Android Gradle plugin version 3.4.0, you can opt-in to check whether your project declares acceptable package names by adding the line below to your gradle.properties file.

  android.uniquePackageNames = true
  

  To learn more about setting a package name through the Android Gradle plugin, see Set the application ID.

3.3.0 (January 2019)

This version of the Android plugin requires the following:

• Gradle 4.10.1 or higher. To learn more, read the section about updating Gradle.

• SDK Build Tools 28.0.3 or higher.

New features

• Improved classpath synchronization: When resolving dependencies on your runtime and compile time classpaths, the Android Gradle plugin attempts to fix certain downstream version conflicts for dependencies that appear across multiple classpaths.

  For example, if the runtime classpath includes Library A version 2.0 and the compile classpath includes Library A version 1.0, the plugin automatically updates the dependency on the compile classpath to Library A version 2.0 to avoid errors.

  However, if the runtime classpath includes Library A version 1.0 and the compile includes Library A version 2.0, the plugin does not downgrade the dependency on the compile classpath to Library A version 1.0, and you will get an error. To learn more, see Fix conflicts between classpaths.

• Improved incremental Java compilation when using annotation processors: This update decreases build time by improving support for incremental Java compilation when using annotation processors.

  • For projects using Kapt (most Kotlin-only projects and Kotlin-Java hybrid projects): Incremental Java compilation is enabled, even when you use data binding or the retro-lambda plugin. Annotation processing by the Kapt task is not yet incremental.

  • For projects not using Kapt (Java-only projects): If the annotation processors you use all support incremental annotation processing, incremental Java compilation is enabled by default. To monitor incremental annotation processor adoption, watch Gradle issue 5277.

    If, however, one or more annotation processors do not support incremental builds, incremental Java compilation is not enabled. Instead, you can include the following flag in your gradle.properties file:

    android.enableSeparateAnnotationProcessing=true
    

    When you include this flag, the Android Gradle plugin executes the annotation processors in a separate task and allows the Java compilation task to run incrementally.

• Better debug info when using obsolete API: When the plugin detects that you're using an API that's no longer supported, it can now provide more-detailed information to help you determine where that API is being used. To see the additional info, you need to include the following in your project's gradle.properties file:

  android.debug.obsoleteApi=true
  

  You can also enable the flag by passing -Pandroid.debug.obsoleteApi=true from the command line.

• You can run instrumentation tests on dynamic feature modules from the command line.

Behavior changes

• Lazy task configuration: The plugin now uses Gradle’s new task creation API to avoid initializing and configuring tasks that are not required to complete the current build (or tasks not on the execution task graph). For example, if you have multiple build variants, such as “release” and “debug” build variants, and you're building the “debug” version of your app, the plugin avoids initializing and configuring tasks for the “release” version of your app.

  Calling certain older methods in the Variants API, such as variant.getJavaCompile(), might still force task configuration. To make sure that your build is optimized for lazy task configuration, invoke new methods that instead return a TaskProvider object, such as variant.getJavaCompileProvider().

  If you execute custom build tasks, learn how to adapt to Gradle’s new task-creation API.

• For a given build type, when setting useProguard false, the plugin now uses R8 instead of ProGuard to shrink and obfuscate your app’s code and resources. To learn more about R8, read this blog post from the Android Developer’s Blog.

• Faster R class generation for library projects: Previously, the Android Gradle plugin would generate an R.java file for each of your project's dependencies and then compile those R classes alongside your app's other classes. The plugin now generates a JAR containing your app's compiled R class directly, without first building intermediate R.java classes. This optimization may significantly improve build performance for projects that include many library subprojects and dependencies, and improve the indexing speed in Android Studio.

• When building an Android App Bundle, APKs generated from that app bundle that target Android 6.0 (API level 23) or higher now include uncompressed versions of your native libraries by default. This optimization avoids the need for the device to make a copy of the library and thus reduces the on-disk size of your app. If you'd rather disable this optimization, add the following to your gradle.properties file:

  android.bundle.enableUncompressedNativeLibs = false
  

• The plugin enforces minimum versions of some third-party plugins.

• Single-variant project sync: Syncing your project with your build configuration is an important step in letting Android Studio understand how your project is structured. However, this process can be time-consuming for large projects. If your project uses multiple build variants, you can now optimize project syncs by limiting them to only the variant you have currently selected.

  You need to use Android Studio 3.3 or higher with Android Gradle Plugin 3.3.0 or higher to enable this optimization. When you meet these requirements, the IDE prompts you to enable this optimization when you sync your project. The optimization is also enabled by default on new projects.

  To enable this optimization manually, click File > Settings > Experimental > Gradle (Android Studio > Preferences > Experimental > Gradle on a Mac) and select the Only sync the active variant checkbox.

  Note: This optimization fully supports projects that include Java and C++ languages, and has some support for Kotlin. When enabling the optimization for projects with Kotlin content, Gradle sync falls back to using full variants internally.

• Automatic downloading of missing SDK packages: This functionality has been expanded to support NDK. To learn more, read Auto-download missing packages with Gradle.

Bug Fixes

• Android Gradle plugin 3.3.0 fixes the following issues:

  • The build process calling android.support.v8.renderscript.RenderScript instead of the AndroidX version, despite Jetifier being enabled
  • Clashes due to androidx-rs.jar including statically bundled annotation.AnyRes
  • When using RenderScript, you no longer have to manually set the Build Tools version in your build.gradle files

3.2.0 (September 2018)

This version of the Android plugin requires the following:

• Gradle 4.6 or higher. To learn more, read the section about updating Gradle.
• SDK Build Tools 28.0.3 or higher.

New features

• Support for building Android App Bundles: The app bundle is a new upload format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources while deferring APK generation and signing to the Google Play Store. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs, and users get smaller downloads that are optimized for their device. To learn more, read About Android App Bundles.

• Support for improved incremental build speeds when using annotation processors: The AnnotationProcessorOptions DSL now extends CommandLineArgumentProvider, which enables either you or the annotation processor author to annotate arguments for the processor using incremental build property type annotations. Using these annotations improves the correctness and performance of incremental and cached clean builds. To learn more, read Pass arguments to annotation processors.

• Migration tool for AndroidX: When using Android Gradle plugin 3.2.0 with Android 3.2 and higher, you can migrate your project’s local and Maven dependencies to use the new AndroidX libraries by selecting Refactor > Migrate to AndroidX from the menu bar. Using this migration tool also sets the following flags to true in your gradle.properties file:

  • android.useAndroidX: When set to true, the Android plugin uses the appropriate AndroidX library instead of a Support Library. When this flag is not specified, the plugin sets it to false by default.
  • android.enableJetifier: When set to true, the Android plugin automatically migrates existing third-party libraries to use AndroidX by rewriting their binaries. When this flag is not specified, the plugin sets it to false by default. You can set this flag to true only while android.useAndroidX is also set to true, otherwise you get a build error.

  To learn more, read the AndroidX overview.

• New code shrinker, R8: R8 is a new tool for code shrinking and obfuscation that replaces ProGuard. You can start using the preview version of R8 by including the following in your project’s gradle.properties file:

  android.enableR8 = true
  

Behavior changes

• Desugaring with D8 is now enabled by default.

• AAPT2 is now on Google's Maven repo. To use AAPT2, make sure that you have the google() dependency in your build.gradle file, as shown below:

  buildscript {
        repositories {
            google() // here
            jcenter()
        }
        dependencies {
            classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.2.0'
        }
    }
    allprojects {
        repositories {
            google() // and here
            jcenter()
    }
  

• Native multidex is now enabled by default. Previous versions of Android Studio enabled native multidex when deploying the debug version of an app to a device running Android API level 21 or higher. Now, whether you’re deploying to a device or building an APK for release, the Android Gradle plugin enables native multidex for all modules that set minSdkVersion=21 or higher.

• The plugin now enforces a minimum version of the protobuf plugin (0.8.6), Kotlin plugin (1.2.50), and Crashlytics plugin (1.25.4).

• The feature module plugin,com.android.feature, now enforces the use of only letters, digits, and underscores when specifying a module name. For example, if your feature module name includes dashes, you get a build error. This behavior matches that of the dynamic feature module plugin.

Bug fixes

• JavaCompile is now cacheable in projects with data binding. (Issue #69243050)
• Better compile avoidance for library modules with data binding. (Issue #77539932)
• You can now re-enable configure-on-demand if you've disable it in earlier versions due to some unpredictable build errors. (Issue #77910727)

3.1.0 (March 2018)

This version of the Android plugin requires the following:

• Gradle 4.4 or higher. To learn more, read the section about updating Gradle.
• Build Tools 27.0.3 or higher. Keep in mind, you no longer need to specify a version for the build tools using the android.buildToolsVersion property—the plugin uses the minimum required version by default.

New DEX compiler, D8

By default, Android Studio now uses a new DEX compiler called D8. DEX compilation is the process of transforming .class bytecode into .dex bytecode for the Android Runtime (or Dalvik, for older versions of Android). Compared to the previous compiler, called DX, D8 compiles faster and outputs smaller DEX files, all while having the same or better app runtime performance.

D8 shouldn't change your day-to-day app development workflow. However, if you experience any issues related to the new compiler, please report a bug. You can temporarily disable D8 and use DX by including the following in your project's gradle.properties file:

android.enableD8=false

For projects that use Java 8 language features, incremental desugaring is enabled by default. You can disable it by specifying the following in your project's gradle.properties file:

android.enableIncrementalDesugaring=false.

Preview users: If you're already using a preview version of D8, note that it now compiles against libraries included in the SDK build tools—not the JDK. So, if you are accessing APIs that exist in the JDK but not in the SDK build tools libraries, you get a compile error.

Behavior changes

• When building multiple APKs that each target a different ABI, the plugin no longer generates APKs for the following ABIs by default: mips, mips64, and armeabi.

  If you want to build APKs that target these ABIs, you must use NDK r16b or lower and specify the ABIs in your build.gradle file, as shown below:

  splits {
    abi {
        include 'armeabi', 'mips', 'mips64'
        ...
    }
  }
  

• When building configuration APKs for an Android Instant App, language configuration splits are now grouped by the root language by default. For example, if your app includes resources for zh-TW or zh-CN locales, Gradle will package those resources in a zh language configuration split. You can override this behavior by defining your own groups using the include property, as shown below:

  splits {
      language {
          enable true
          // Each string defines a group of locales that
          // Gradle should package together.
          include "in,id",
                  "iw,he",
                  "fil,tl,tgl",
                  "yue,zh,zh-TW,zh-CN"
      }
  }
  

• The Android plugin's build cache now evicts cache entries that are older than 30 days.

• Passing "auto" to resConfig no longer automatically picks string resources to package into your APK. If you continue to use "auto", the plugin packages all string resources your app and its dependencies provide. So, you should instead specify each locale that you want the plugin to package into your APK.

• Because local modules can't depend on your app's test APK, adding dependencies to your instrumented tests using the androidTestApi configuration, instead of androidTestImplementation, causes Gradle to issue the following warning:

    WARNING: Configuration 'androidTestApi' is obsolete
    and has been replaced with 'androidTestImplementation'
  

Fixes

• Fixes an issue where Android Studio doesn't properly recognize dependencies in composite builds.
• Fixes an issue where you get a project sync error when loading the Android plugin multiple times in a single build–for example, when multiple subprojects each include the Android plugin in their buildscript classpath.

3.0.0 (October 2017)

Android Gradle plugin 3.0.0 includes a variety of changes that aim to address performance issues of large projects.

For example, on a sample skeleton project with ~130 modules and a large number of external dependencies (but no code or resources), you can experience performance improvements similar to the following:

Some of these changes break existing builds. So, you should consider the effort of migrating your project before using the new plugin.

If you don't experience the performance improvements described above, please file a bug and include a trace of your build using the Gradle Profiler.

This version of the Android plugin requires the following:

• Gradle 4.1 or higher. To learn more, read the section about updating Gradle.
• Build Tools 26.0.2 or higher. With this update, you no longer need to specify a version for the build tools—the plugin uses the minimum required version by default. So, you can now remove the android.buildToolsVersion property.

Optimizations

• Better parallelism for multi-module projects through a fine grained task graph.
• When making changes to dependency, Gradle performs faster builds by not re-compiling modules that do not have access to that dependency's API. You should restrict which dependencies leak their APIs to other modules by using Gradle's new dependency configurations: implementation, api, compileOnly, and runtimeOnly.
• Faster incremental build speed due to per-class dexing. Each class is now compiled into separate DEX files, and only the classes that are modified are re-dexed. You should also expect improved build speeds for apps that set minSdkVersion to 20 or lower, and use legacy multi-dex.
• Improved build speeds by optimizing certain tasks to use chached outputs. To benefit from this optimization, you need to first enable the Gradle build cache.
• Improved incremental resource processing using AAPT2, which is now enabled by default. If you are experiencing issues while using AAPT2, please report a bug. You can also disable AAPT2 by setting android.enableAapt2=false in your gradle.properties file and restarting the Gradle daemon by running ./gradlew --stop from the command line.

New features

• Variant-aware dependency management. When building a certain variant of a module, the plugin now automatically matches variants of local library module dependencies to the variant of the module you are building.
• Includes a new Feature module plugin to support Android Instant Apps and the Android Instant Apps SDK (which you can download using the SDK manager). To learn more about creating Feature modules with the new plugin, read Structure of an instant app with multiple features.
• Built-in support for using certain Java 8 language features and Java 8 libraries. Jack is now deprecated and no longer required, and you should first disable Jack to use the improved Java 8 support built into the default toolchain. For more information, read Use Java 8 language features.
• Added support for running tests with Android Test Orchestrator, which allows you to run each of your app's tests within its own invocation of Instrumentation. Because each test runs in its own Instrumentation instance, any shared state between tests doesn't accumulate on your device's CPU or memory. And, even if one test crashes, it takes down only its own instance of Instrumentation, so your other tests still run.
  • Added testOptions.execution to determine whether to use on-device test orchestration. If you want to use Android Test Orchestrator, you need to specify ANDROID_TEST_ORCHESTRATOR, as shown below. By default, this property is set to HOST, which disables on-device orchestration and is the standard method of running tests.

android {
  testOptions {
    execution 'ANDROID_TEST_ORCHESTRATOR'
  }
}

• New androidTestUtil dependency configuration allows you to install another test helper APK before running your instrumentation tests, such as Android Test Orchestrator:

dependencies {
  androidTestUtil 'com.android.support.test:orchestrator:1.0.0'
  ...
}

• Added testOptions.unitTests.includeAndroidResources to support unit tests that require Android resources, such as Roboelectric. When you set this property to true, the plugin performs resource, asset, and manifest merging before running your unit tests. Your tests can then inspect com/android/tools/test_config.properties on the classpath for the following keys:
  • android_merged_assets: the absolute path to the merged assets directory.

    Note: For library modules, the merged assets do not contain the assets of dependencies (see issue #65550419).

  • android_merged_manifest: the absolute path to the merged manifest file.
  • android_merged_resources: the absolute path to the merged resources directory, which contains all the resources from the module and all its dependencies.
  • android_custom_package: the package name of the final R class. If you dynamically modify the application ID, this package name may not match the package attribute in the app's manifest.
• Support for fonts as resources (which is a new feature introduced in Android 8.0 (API level 26)).
• Support for language-specific APKs with Android Instant Apps SDK 1.1 and higher. For more information, see Configure your build for pure splits.
• You can now change the output directory for your external native build project, as shown below:

android {
    ...
    externalNativeBuild {
        // For ndk-build, instead use the ndkBuild block.
        cmake {
            ...
            // Specifies a relative path for outputs from external native
            // builds. You can specify any path that's not a subdirectory
            // of your project's temporary build/ directory.
            buildStagingDirectory "./outputs/cmake"
        }
    }
}

• You can now use CMake 3.7 or higher when building native projects from Android Studio.
• New lintChecks dependency configuration allows you to build a JAR that defines custom lint rules, and package it into your AAR and APK projects. Your custom lint rules must belong to a separate project that outputs a single JAR and includes only compileOnly dependencies. Other app and library modules can then depend on your lint project using the lintChecks configuration:

dependencies {
    // This tells the Gradle plugin to build ':lint-checks' into a lint.jar file
    // and package it with your module. If the module is an Android library,
    // other projects that depend on it automatically use the lint checks.
    // If the module is an app, lint includes these rules when analyzing the app.
    lintChecks project(':lint-checks')
}

Behavior changes

• Android plugin 3.0.0 removes certain APIs, and your build will break if you use them. For example, you can no longer use the Variants API to access outputFile() objects or use processManifest.manifestOutputFile() to get the manifest file for each variant. To learn more, read API changes.
• You no longer need to specify a version for the build tools (so, you can now remove the android.buildToolsVersion property). By default, the plugin automatically uses the minimum required build tools version for the version of Android plugin you're using.
• You now enable PNG crunching in the buildTypes block, as shown below. PNG crunching is enabled by default for all builds except debug builds because it increases build times for projects that include many PNG files. So, to improve build times for other build types, you should either disable PNG crunching or convert your images to WebP.

android {
  buildTypes {
    release {
      // Disables PNG crunching for the release build type.
      crunchPngs false
    }
  }
}

• The Android plugin now automatically builds executable targets that you configure in your external CMake projects.
• You must now add annotation processors to the processor classpath using the annotationProcessor dependency configuration.
• Using the deprecated ndkCompile is now more restricted. You should instead migrate to using either CMake or ndk-build to compile native code that you want to package into your APK. To learn more, read Migrate from ndkcompile.

2.3.0 (February 2017)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 3.3 or higher.
• Build Tools 25.0.0 or higher.

New:

• Uses Gradle 3.3, which includes performance improvements and new features. For more details, see the Gradle release notes.
• Build cache: stores certain outputs that the Android plugin generates when building your project (such as unpackaged AARs and pre-dexed remote dependencies). Your clean builds are much faster while using the cache because the build system can simply reuse those cached files during subsequent builds, instead of recreating them. Projects using Android plugin 2.3.0 and higher use the build cache by default. To learn more, read Improve Build Speed with Build Cache.
  • Includes a cleanBuildCache task that clears the build cache.
  • If you are using the experimental version of build cache (included in earlier versions of the plugin), you should update your plugin to the latest version.

Changes:

• Supports changes to Instant Run included in Android Studio 2.3.
• Configuration times for very large projects should be significantly faster.
• Fixed issues with auto-downloading for the constraint layout library.
• Plugin now uses ProGuard version 5.3.2.
• Includes many fixes for reported bugs. Please continue to file bug reports when you encounter issues.

2.2.0 (September 2016)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.14.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 23.0.2 or higher.

New:

• Uses Gradle 2.14.1, which includes performance improvements and new features, and fixes a security vulnerability that allows local privilege escalation when using the Gradle daemon. For more details, see the Gradle release notes.
• Using the externalNativeBuild {} DSL, Gradle now lets you link to your native sources and compile native libraries using CMake or ndk-build. After building your native libraries, Gradle packages them into your APK. To learn more about using CMake and ndk-build with Gradle, read Add C and C++ Code to Your Project.
• When you run a build from the command line, Gradle now attempts to auto-download any missing SDK components or updates that your project depends on. To learn more, read Auto-download missing packages with Gradle.
• A new experimental caching feature lets Gradle speed up build times by pre-dexing, storing, and reusing the pre-dexed versions of your libraries. To learn more about using this experimental feature, read the Build Cache guide.
• Improves build performance by adopting a new default packaging pipeline which handles zipping, signing, and zipaligning in one task. You can revert to using the older packaging tools by adding android.useOldPackaging=true to your gradle.properties file. While using the new packaging tool, the zipalignDebug task is not available. However, you can create one yourself by calling the createZipAlignTask(String taskName, File inputFile, File outputFile) method.
• APK signing now uses APK Signature Scheme v2 in addition to traditional JAR signing. All Android platforms accept the resulting APKs. Any modification to these APKs after signing invalidates their v2 signatures and prevents installation on a device. To disable this feature, add the following to your module-level build.gradle file:

  android {
    ...
    signingConfigs {
      config {
        ...
        v2SigningEnabled false
      }
    }
  }
  

• For multidex builds, you can now use ProGuard rules to determine which classes Gradle should compile into your app’s main DEX file. Because the Android system loads the main DEX file first when starting your app, you can prioritize certain classes at startup by compiling them into the main DEX file. After you create a ProGuard configuration file specifically for your main DEX file, pass the configuration file’s path to Gradle using buildTypes.multiDexKeepProguard. Using this DSL is different from using buildTypes.proguardFiles, which provides general ProGuard rules for your app and does not specify classes for the main DEX file.
• Adds support for the android:extractNativeLibs flag, which can reduce the size of your app when you install it on a device. When you set this flag to false in the <application> element of your app manifest, Gradle packages uncompressed and aligned versions of your native libraries with your APK. This prevents PackageManager from copying out your native libraries from the APK to the device's file system during installation and has the added benefit of making delta updates of your app smaller.
• You can now specify versionNameSuffix and applicationIdSuffix for product flavors. (Issue 59614)

Changes:

• getDefaultProguardFile now returns the default ProGuard files that Android plugin for Gradle provides and no longer uses the ones in the Android SDK.
• Improved Jack compiler performance and features:
  • Jack now supports Jacoco test coverage when setting testCoverageEnabled to true.
  • Improved support for annotation processors. Annotation processors on your classpath, such as any compile dependencies, are automatically applied to your build. You can also specify an annotation processor in your build and pass arguments by using the javaCompileOptions.annotationProcessorOptions {} DSL in your module-level build.gradle file:

    android {
      ...
      defaultConfig {
        ...
        javaCompileOptions {
          annotationProcessorOptions {
            className 'com.example.MyProcessor'
            // Arguments are optional.
            arguments = [ foo : 'bar' ]
          }
        }
      }
    }
    

    If you want to apply an annotation processor at compile time but not include it in your APK, use the annotationProcessor dependency scope:

    dependencies {
        compile 'com.google.dagger:dagger:2.0'
        annotationProcessor 'com.google.dagger:dagger-compiler:2.0'
       // or use buildVariantAnnotationProcessor to target a specific build variant
    }
    

  • You can set additional flags for Jack using jackOptions.additionalParameters(). The following code snippet sets the jack.incremental parameter to true:

    android {
      defaultConfig {
        ...
        jackOptions {
          enabled true
          additionalParameters("jack.incremental" : true)
        }
      }
    }
    

    For a list of parameters you can set, run the following from the command line:

    java -jar /build-tools/jack.jar --help-properties
    

  • By default, if the Gradle daemon's heap size is at least 1.5 GB, Jack now runs in the same process as Gradle. To adjust the daemon heap size, add the following to your gradle.properties file:

    # This sets the daemon heap size to 1.5GB.
    org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx1536M
    

2.1.0 (April 2016)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.10 or higher.
• Build Tools 23.0.2 or higher.

New:

• Added support for the N Developer Preview, JDK 8, and Java 8 language features using the Jack toolchain. To find out more, read the N Preview guide.

  Note: Instant Run does not currently work with Jack and will be disabled while using the new toolchain. You only need to use Jack if you are developing for the N Preview and want to use the supported Java 8 language features.

• Added default support for incremental Java compilation to reduce compilation time during development. It does this by only recompiling portions of the source that have changed or need to be recompiled. To disable this feature, add the following code to your module-level build.gradle file:

  android {
    ...
    compileOptions {
      incremental false
    }
  }
  

• Added support for dexing-in-process which performs dexing within the build process rather than in a separate, external VM processes. This not only makes incremental builds faster, but also speeds up full builds. The feature is enabled by default for projects that have set the Gradle daemon's maximum heap size to at least 2048 MB. You can do this by including the following in your project's gradle.properties file:

  org.gradle.jvmargs = -Xmx2048m
  

  If you have defined a value for javaMaxHeapSize in your module-level build.gradle file, you need to set org.gradle.jvmargs to the value of javaMaxHeapSize + 1024 MB. For example, if you have set javaMaxHeapSize to "2048m", you need to add the following to your project's gradle.properties file:

  org.gradle.jvmargs = -Xmx3072m
  

  To disable dexing-in-process, add the following code to your module-level build.gradle file:

  android {
    ...
    dexOptions {
        dexInProcess false
    }
  }
  

2.0.0 (April 2016)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.10 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

New:

• Enables Instant Run by supporting bytecode injection, and pushing code and resource updates to a running app on the emulator or a physical device.
• Added support for incremental builds, even when the app isn’t running. Full build times are improved by pushing incremental changes through the Android Debug Bridge to the connected device.
• Added maxProcessCount to control how many slave dex processes can be spawned concurrently. The following code, in the module-level build.gradle file, sets the maximum number of concurrent processes to 4:

  android {
    ...
    dexOptions {
      maxProcessCount = 4 // this is the default value
    }
  }
  

• Added an experimental code shrinker to support pre-dexing and reduce re-dexing of dependencies, which are not supported with Proguard. This improves the build speed of your debug build variant. Because the experimental shrinker does not support optimization and obfuscation, you should enable Proguard for your release builds. To enable the experimental shrinker for your debug builds, add the following to your module-level build.gradle file:

  android {
    ...
    buildTypes {
      debug {
        minifyEnabled true
        useProguard false
      }
      release {
        minifyEnabled true
        useProguard true // this is a default setting
      }
    }
  }
  

• Added logging support and improved performance for the resource shrinker. The resource shrinker now logs all of its operations into a resources.txt file located in the same folder as the Proguard log files.

Changed behavior:

• When minSdkVersion is set to 18 or higher, APK signing uses SHA256.
• DSA and ECDSA keys can now sign APK packages.

  Note: The Android keystore provider no longer supports DSA keys on Android 6.0 (API level 23) and higher.

Fixed issues:

• Fixed an issue that caused duplicate AAR dependencies in both the test and main build configurations.

Older releases

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.5.0 (November 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Integrated the Data Binding plugin into the Android plugin for Gradle. To enable it, add the following code to each per-project build.gradle file that uses the plugin:

android {
    dataBinding {
        enabled = true
    }
}

• Added a new Transform API to allow third-party plugins to manipulate compiled .class files before they’re converted to .dex files. The Transform API simplifies injecting custom class manipulations while offering more flexibility regarding what you can manipulate. To insert a transform into a build, create a new class implementing one of the Transform interfaces, and register it with android.registerTransform(theTransform) or android.registerTransform(theTransform, dependencies). There’s no need to wire tasks together. Note the following about the Transform API:
• A transform can apply to one or more of the following: the current project, subprojects, and external libraries.
• A transform must be registered globally, which applies them to all variants.
• Internal code processing, through the Java Code Coverage Library (JaCoCo), ProGuard, and MultiDex, now uses the Transform API. However, the Java Android Compiler Kit (Jack) doesn’t use this API: only the javac/dx code path does.
• Gradle executes the transforms in this order: JaCoCo, third-party plugins, ProGuard. The execution order for third-party plugins matches the order in which the transforms are added by the third party plugins; third-party plugin developers can't control the execution order of the transforms through an API.
• Deprecated the dex getter from the ApplicationVariant class. You can't access the Dex task through the variant API anymore because it’s now accomplished through a transform. There's currently no replacement for controlling the dex process.
• Fixed incremental support for assets.
• Improved MultiDex support by making it available for test projects, and tests now automatically have the com.android.support:multidex-instrumentation dependency.
• Added the ability to properly fail a Gradle build and report the underlying error cause when the Gradle build invokes asynchronous tasks and there’s a failure in the worker process.
• Added support for configuring a specific Application Binary Interface (ABI) in variants that contain multiple ABIs.
• Added support for a comma-separated list of device serial numbers for the ANDROID_SERIAL environment variable when installing or running tests.
• Fixed an installation failure on devices running Android 5.0 (API level 20) and higher when the APK name contains a space.
• Fixed various issues related to the Android Asset Packaging Tool (AAPT) error output.
• Added JaCoCo incremental instrumentation support for faster incremental builds. The Android plugin for Gradle now invokes the JaCoCo instrumenter directly. To force a newer version of the JaCoCo instrumenter, you need to add it as a build script dependency.
• Fixed JaCoCo support so it ignores files that aren’t classes.
• Added vector drawable support for generating PNGs at build time for backward-compatibility. Android plugin for Gradle generates PNGs for every vector drawable found in a resource directory that doesn’t specify an API version or specifies an android:minSdkVersion attribute of 20 or lower in the <uses-sdk> element in the app manifest. You can set PNG densities by using the generatedDensities property in the defaultConfig or productFlavor sections of a build.gradle file.
• Added sharing of the mockable android.jar, which the plugin generates only once and uses for unit testing. Multiple modules, such as app and lib, now share it. Delete $rootDir/build to regenerate it.
• Changed the processing of Java resources to occur before the obfuscation tasks instead of during the packaging of the APK. This change allows the obfuscation tasks to have a chance to adapt the Java resources following packages obfuscation.
• Fixed an issue with using Java Native Interface (JNI) code in the experimental library plugin.
• Added the ability to set the platform version separately from the android:compileSdkVersion attribute in the experimental library plugin.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.3.1 (August 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Fixed the ZipAlign task to properly consume the output of the previous task when using a customized filename.
• Fixed Renderscript packaging with the NDK.
• Maintained support for the createDebugCoverageReport build task.
• Fixed support for customized use of the archiveBaseName property in the build.gradle build> file.
• Fixed the Invalid ResourceType lint warning caused by parameter method annotation lookup when running lint outside of Android Studio.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.3.0 (July 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Added support for the com.android.build.threadPoolSize property to control the Android task thread pool size from the gradle.properties file or the command line. The following example sets this property to 4.

  -Pcom.android.build.threadPoolSize=4
  

• Set the default build behavior to exclude LICENSE and LICENSE.txt files from APKs. To include these files in an APK, remove these files from the packagingOptions.excludes property in the build.gradle file. For example:

  android {
        packagingOptions.excludes = []
      }
  

• Added the sourceSets task to inspect the set of all available source sets.
• Enhanced unit test support to recognize multi-flavor and build variant source folders. For example, to test an app with multi-flavors flavor1 and flavorA with the Debug build type, the test source sets are:
  • test
  • testFlavor1
  • testFlavorA
  • testFlavor1FlavorA
  • testFlavor1FlavorADebug

  Android tests already recognized multi-flavor source folders.

• Improved unit test support to:
  • Run javac on main and test sources, even if the useJack property is set to true in your build file.
  • Correctly recognize dependencies for each build type.
• Added support for specifying instrumentation test-runner arguments from the command line. For example:

  ./gradlew connectedCheck \
     -Pandroid.testInstrumentationRunnerArguments.size=medium \
     -Pandroid.testInstrumentationRunnerArguments.class=TestA,TestB
  

• Added support for arbitrary additional Android Asset Packaging Tool (AAPT) parameters in the build.gradle file. For example:

  android {
      aaptOptions {
        additionalParameters "--custom_option", "value"
      }
  }
  

• Added support for a test APK module as a separate test module, using the targetProjectPath and targetVariant properties to set the APK path and target variant.

  Note: A test APK module does not support product flavors and can only target a single variant. Also, Jacoco is not supported yet.

• Added resource name validation before merging resources.
• When building an AAR (Android ARchive) package for library modules, do not provide an automatic @{applicationId} placeholder in the manifest merger settings. Instead, use a different placeholder, such as @{libApplicationId} and provide a value for it if you want to include application Ids in the archive library.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.2.0 (April 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Enhanced support for running unit tests with Gradle.
• Added support to include Java-style resources in the classpath when running unit tests directly from Gradle.
• Added unit test dependency support for Android ARchive (AAR) artifacts.
• Added support for the unitTestVariants property so unit test variants can be manipulated using the build.gradle file.
• Added the unitTest.all code block under testOptions to configure customized tasks for unit test. The following sample code shows how to add unit test configuration settings using this new option:

  android {
    testOptions {
      unitTest.all {
        jvmArgs '-XX:MaxPermSize=256m' // Or any other gradle option.
      }
    }
  }
  

• Fixed the handling of enums and public instance fields in the packaging of the mockable-android.jar file.
• Fixed library project task dependencies so test classes recompile after changes.
• Added the testProguardFile property to apply ProGuard files when minifying a test APK.
• Added the timeOut property to the adbOptions code block for setting the maximum recording time for Android Debug Bridge screen recording.
• Added support for 280 dpi resources.
• Improved performance during project evaluation.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.1.3 (March 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Fixed issue with duplicated dependencies on a test app that triggered a ProGuard failure.
• Fixed Comparator implementation which did not comply with the JDK Comparator contract and generated a JDK 7 error.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.1.2 (February 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Normalized path when creating a mockable JAR for unit testing.
• Fixed the archivesBaseName setting in the build.gradle file.
• Fixed the unresolved placeholder failure in manifest merger when building a library test application.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.1.1 (February 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Modified build variants so only variants that package a Wear app trigger Wear-specific build tasks.
• Changed dependency related issues to fail at build time rather than at debug time. This behavior allows you to run diagnostic diagnostic tasks (such as 'dependencies') to help resolve the conflict.
• Fixed the android.getBootClasspath() method to return a value.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.1.0 (February 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 or higher.
• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Added new unit test support
• Enabled unit tests to run on the local JVM against a special version of the android.jar file that is compatible with popular mocking frameworks, for example Mockito.
• Added new test tasks testDebug, testRelease, and testMyFlavorDebug when using product flavors.
• Added new source folders recognized as unit tests: src/test/java/, src/testDebug/java/, src/testMyFlavor/java/.
• Added new configurations in the build.gradle file for declaring test-only dependencies, for example, testCompile 'junit:junit:4.11', testMyFlavorCompile 'some:library:1.0'.

  Note: Test-only dependencies are not currently compatible with Jack (Java Android Compiler Kit).

• Added the android.testOptions.unitTests.returnDefaultValues option to control the behaviour of the mockable android.jar.
• Replaced Test in test task names with AndroidTest. For example, the assembleDebugTest task is now assembleDebugAndroidTest task. Unit test tasks still have UnitTest in the task name, for example assembleDebugUnitTest.
• Modified ProGuard configuration files to no longer apply to the test APK. If minification is enabled, ProGuard processes the test APK and applies only the mapping file that is generated when minifying the main APK.
• Updated dependency management
• Fixed issues using provided and package scopes.

  Note: These scopes are incompatible with AAR (Android ARchive) packages and will cause a build with AAR packages to fail.

• Modified dependency resolution to compare the dependencies of an app under test and the test app. If an artifact with the same version is found for both apps, it's not included with the test app and is packaged only with the app under test. If an artifact with a different version is found for both apps, the build fails.
• Added support for anyDpi resource qualifier in resource merger.
• Improved evaluation and IDE sync speeds for projects with a large number of Android modules.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.0.1 (January 2015)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 up to 2.3.x.

  Note: This version of the Android plugin for Gradle is not compatible with Gradle 2.4 and higher.

• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Fixed issue with Gradle build failure when accessing the extractReleaseAnnotations module. (Issue 81638).
• Fixed issue with Disable passing the --no-optimize setting to the Dalvik Executable (dex) bytecode. (Issue 82662).
• Fixed manifest merger issues when importing libraries with a targetSdkVersion less than 16.
• Fixed density ordering issue when using Android Studio with JDK 8.

Android plugin for Gradle, revision 1.0.0 (December 2014)

Dependencies:

• Gradle 2.2.1 up to 2.3.x.

  Note: This version of the Android plugin for Gradle is not compatible with Gradle 2.4 and higher.

• Build Tools 21.1.1 or higher.

General Notes:

• Initial plugin release.