Creating styles-v21.xml

Question

In Android Studio, I imported a project which did not include styles.xml (v21). So I created a styles-v21.xml file in the values directory. Both styles.xml and styles-v21.xml are in the values directory now.

styles.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

    <style name="AppTheme" parent="AppTheme.Base">
        <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
    </style>

    <style name="AppTheme.Base" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">

    </style>

</resources>

styles-v21.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Material.Light.DarkActionBar">

    </style>

</resources>

When I build the project I get a build error:

Error:Error: Duplicate resources: C:\xxx\main\res\values\styles-v21.xml:style/AppTheme, C:\xxx\main\res\values\styles.xml:style/AppTheme

The error is that both resource files have the same style name: AppTheme. But in other projects and tutorials I've seen, these styles have the same name. One is for Android with version 21 compatibility and the other is for Android without the compatibility.

I guess I want to know if I should simply change the name or if these files are supposed to have the same name - which means there is a bigger problem at hand. How should I proceed?

Answer 1

Right click on res folder, choose New --> Android resource file, set the same name for the new file "styles", in Available qualifiers: choose the last item "Version" and finally set "Platform API level" 21.