Ionic Cordova app stopped compiling after Google's June 17th Firebase SDK update

Question

I'm unable to compile Ionic Cordova App after Firebase Major version update with Breaking Changes, specifically with June 17, 2019 update.

I tried downgrading to Android Cordova 6.3.0 but my project must be 7.0.0.

This is my ionic info:

@ionic/cli-utils  : 1.19.2
    ionic (Ionic CLI) : 3.20.0

global packages:

    cordova (Cordova CLI) : 8.0.0

local packages:

    @ionic/app-scripts : 3.2.1
    Cordova Platforms  : android 7.0.0 browser 5.0.4
    Ionic Framework    : ionic-angular 3.9.3

System:

    Android SDK Tools : 26.1.1
    Node              : v8.9.1
    npm               : 5.5.1
    OS                : Windows 10

Environment Variables:

    ANDROID_HOME : C:\Development\android-sdk

Misc:

    backend : pro

This is the error I'm Getting:

:app:processDebugResources C:\Users\mmzep.gradle\caches\transforms-1\files-1.1\core-1.0.0.aar\73b4a83ab5e76f20c84a66b1c8444d08\res\values\values.xml:133:5-70: AAPT: error: resource android:attr/fontVariationSettings not found.

C:\Users\mmzep.gradle\caches\transforms-1\files-1.1\core-1.0.0.aar\73b4a83ab5e76f20c84a66b1c8444d08\res\values\values.xml:133:5-70: AAPT: error: resource android:attr/ttcIndex not found.

C:\Users\mmzep\Desktop\mario\Seven\SevenPassengerApp\platforms\android\app\build\intermediates\incremental\mergeDebugResources\merged.dir\values\values.xml:95: error: resource android:attr/fontVariationSettings not found. C:\Users\mmzep\Desktop\mario\Seven\SevenPassengerApp\platforms\android\app\build\intermediates\incremental\mergeDebugResources\merged.dir\values\values.xml:95: error: resource android:attr/ttcIndex not found. error: failed linking references.

Failed to execute aapt

com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: Failed to execute aapt

Answer 1

This build failure is due to a major version release of the Google Play Services and Firebase libaries on June 17.

The new library versions have the following requirements:

• Upgrade com.android.tools.build:gradle to v3.2.1 or later.
• Upgrade compileSdkVersion to 28 or later.
• Update your app to use Jetpack (AndroidX)

The first two requirements can be resolved by updating to use [email protected].

The third requires that your Android project migrates to using AndroidX (Jetpack). AndroidX is the successor to the widely-used Android Support Library. AndroidX now used by the latest versions of Play Services/Firebase libraries and the Support library is used by many existing plugins such as cordova-plugin-firebase. The two libraries cannot live side-by-side in the same Android build - doing so will lead to build failure.

To resolve this issue, add the following two plugins your Cordova project:

• cordova-plugin-androidx to enable AndroidX in the Android project.
• cordova-plugin-androidx-adapter to dynamically patch the source code of any plugins using the Support Library to use the AndroidX equivalents.

For a working example of how to try this out in a test project, see my comment on this Github issue.

Note: if you are using cordova-plugin-firebase and encountering errors, you can instead use my fork of that plugin which is published as cordova-plugin-firebasex and is fixed to resolve issues caused by the new Firebase SDK:

rm -Rf platforms/android
cordova plugin rm cordova-plugin-firebase
rm -Rf plugins/ node_modules/
npm install
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-firebasex
cordova platform add android