Fabric's Crashlytics with Firebase can't be disabled for DEBUG builds

Question

I have an app that utilises Fabric's Crashlytics via Firebase. The following is the first thing executed in my Applications onCreate

CrashlyticsCore crashlyticsCore = new CrashlyticsCore.Builder()
    .disabled(BuildConfig.DEBUG)
    .build();
Fabric.with(this, new Crashlytics.Builder().core(crashlyticsCore).build());

Nonetheless, the crashes are submitted in DEBUG == true mode.

I use the following versions

in my build.gradle classpath "io.fabric.tools:gradle:1.25.1"

in my app/build.gradle implementation "com.crashlytics.sdk.android:crashlytics:2.9.1"

Unfortunately the crashes still get reported. Any ideas, what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

Correct answers have been posted by Bob Snyder and niqueco already however it seems kinda tedious to change the meta-data value every time you are building an actual release APK thus here's a solution that uses so called manifestPlaceholder and changes the value automatically to trueor false depending on the buildType.

Add the following to your apps build.gradle

android {

    // ...

    buildTypes {
        debug {
            manifestPlaceholders = [enableCrashReporting:"false"]
        }
        release {
            manifestPlaceholders = [enableCrashReporting:"true"]
        }
    }

}

And this to your AndroidManifest.xml

<manifest ... >

    <application ...>

        // ...

        <meta-data android:name="firebase_crashlytics_collection_enabled" android:value="${enableCrashReporting}" />

    </application>

</manifest>

You can verify the current value by clicking on the Merged Manifest tab once you have opened the AndroidManifest.xml. You should see something like this: