NativeScript 5.4 Build Failures

People who have been using the plugins like Firebase and/or other Google services may have all of a sudden had their apps stop building with an error like this.

+ adding aar plugin dependency: .[some path].\widgets-release.aar
.[somepath].\app\src\main\AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-91 Error:
Attribute application@appComponentFactory value=(android.support.v4.app.CoreComponentFactory) from [com.android.support:support-compat:28.0.0] AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-91
is also present at [androidx.core:core:1.0.0] AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-86 value=(androidx.core.app.CoreComponentFactory).
Suggestion: add 'tools:replace="android:appComponentFactory"' to element at AndroidManifest.xml:19:5-37:19 to override.

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.
What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':app:processDebugManifest'.
Manifest merger failed : Attribute application@appComponentFactory value=(android.support.v4.app.CoreComponentFactory) from [com.android.support:support-compat:28.0.0] AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-91
is also present at [androidx.core:core:1.0.0] AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-86 value=(androidx.core.app.CoreComponentFactory).
Suggestion: add 'tools:replace="android:appComponentFactory"' to element at AndroidManifest.xml:19:5-37:19 to override.

Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights.
Get more help at https://help.gradle.org
BUILD FAILED in 30s

Wonderfully helpful error message huh? Well the issue is that Google recently changed their services to use AndroidX descended components. This change has been in the wings for a while and even NativeScript has been working towards this goal (NS 6.0 will be fully AndroidX). But in the meantime unfortunately Android.* and AndroidX.* are totally incompatible.

There are two things you might have to do to solve this so that you can continue to work...

1. You create (or modify if it exists) a file in your App/App_Resources/Android/before-plugin.gradle and add the following section:

android {
     project.ext { 
          supportVersion = "28.+"
          googlePlayServicesVersion = "16.+"
     }
} 

This will pin your app to continue using a slightly older version of the Google services which is still based on the Android library. (IMPORTANT NOTE: when you later upgrade to NativeScript 6, you will want to delete this out; because NS 6 is Android X based; and so you will want the later versions).

2. If the above doesn't fully solve the issue; you may have to do a search in your node_modules and specifically the plugins for any plugin that actually uses google services in their gradle.include files; they might be hard coded to use a "+" as the version, and you will need to change them to be also "16.+"

--- UPDATE:

I had one of my friends, Dick Smith; showed me another solution via slack this morning; instead use the app.gradle file (also located in the same spot App/App_Resources/Android/app.gradle)

dependencies {
     configurations.all {
          exclude group: 'commons-logging', module: 'commons-logging'
         resolutionStrategy.eachDependency { DependencyResolveDetails details ->
             def requested = details.requested
             if (requested.group == 'com.google.firebase') {
               details.useVersion '17.+'
             }
             if (requested.group == 'com.google.android.gms') {
                 details.useVersion '16.+'
             }
             if (requested.group == 'com.android.support' && requested.name != 'multidex') {
                 // com.android.support major version should match buildToolsVersion
                 details.useVersion '28.+'
             }           
         }
     }
 }

This will override it as Gradle looks for the pieces it needs; it runs this code and even thought the plugins gradle file might state it wants version X of something; it will change it to the version we want... (Please note the same warning applies; when you upgrade to NS 6.0 in a couple months, you will want to then either change these versions to the AndroidX versions or delete this section).

--- End Update.

Finally after you make both those changes; I highly recommend you do a "tns platform clean android" before you rebuild the app, so everything is clean..

Finally if all else fails and you aren't expecting to release your app for another couple months; you can actually upgrade to the test version of NS 6.x; this version is currently unstable and you might have other issues (and you will probably want to update to the latest 6's each day just to try and make sure you are on the most recent version...)

npm i -g nativescript@next
npm i --save tns-core-modules@next
tns platform remove android
tns platform add android@next

If @next fails, and you need to return back to a solid release you can do the following:

npm i -g nativescript@latest
npm i --save tns-core-modules@latest
tns platform remove android
tns platform add android@latest

Please note; I do NOT recommend you run @next it normally is the least stable and most buggy version of Nativescript you can run. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do to proceed. 🙂