How to ensure Android Gradle plugin is at least version 8.9.1 in Expo?

[farmerpaul]

Hey there,

First, thanks for maintaining this great library. Looking forward to trying out the ongoing upgrades!

I've been using v3.2.0 of the plugin on my Expo app and got it working fine on both Android & iOS. I just tried upgrading to v4.0.0, and am now running into errors when I try to rebuild, which seem to stem from my Android Gradle plugin (AGP) version being pre-8.9.1.

I ensured a clean prebuild using expo prebuild --clean, even deleted the android folder altogether, and when I rebuild the Android app, the build.gradle file that's generated has no version number attached to AGP:

    classpath('com.android.tools.build:gradle')

However, it seems that it's still using v8.8.2 of AGP. I'm not sure why it doesn't default to the most current version.

I opened the project in Android Studio and it prompted me to run the AGP Upgrade Assistant to update it. I picked version 8.9.1, but it wouldn't let me proceed because the build files didn't specifically target a version yet. So I changed the line above to:

   classpath('com.android.tools.build:gradle:8.8.2')

to be explicit, and then it recognized the change and allowed me to proceed with AGP Upgrade Assistant to update it to 8.9.1. So I got that far.

Then I tried to rebuild the app, but now I have new errors:

> A failure occurred while executing com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks.CheckAarMetadataWorkAction
   > 2 issues were found when checking AAR metadata:
     
       1.  Dependency 'androidx.core:core-ktx:1.17.0' requires libraries and applications that
           depend on it to compile against version 36 or later of the
           Android APIs.
     
           :app is currently compiled against android-35.
     
           Recommended action: Update this project to use a newer compileSdk
           of at least 36, for example 36.
     
           Note that updating a library or application's compileSdk (which
           allows newer APIs to be used) can be done separately from updating
           targetSdk (which opts the app in to new runtime behavior) and
           minSdk (which determines which devices the app can be installed
           on).
     
       2.  Dependency 'androidx.core:core:1.17.0' requires libraries and applications that
           depend on it to compile against version 36 or later of the
           Android APIs.
     
           :app is currently compiled against android-35.
     
           Recommended action: Update this project to use a newer compileSdk
           of at least 36, for example 36.
     
           Note that updating a library or application's compileSdk (which
           allows newer APIs to be used) can be done separately from updating
           targetSdk (which opts the app in to new runtime behavior) and
           minSdk (which determines which devices the app can be installed
           on).

Did this update to AGP somehow cause a new dependcency on Android API 36?

I'd prefer not to dive into targeting Android API 36 at the moment as it might cause other headaches (which my team can deal with when we have time).

Even if I did solve this new API dependency, I'm not sure how to tell Expo to use AGP 8.9.1. Seems that I can't specify this requirement in Expo's app.json (unless anyone here has bright ideas for how to do that), and everyone on my dev team would have to go into Android Studio manually every time the android build folder is recreated to upgrade AGP, which is an inconvenience.

I'm just trying to understand how others working on this project/maintaining it didn't run into this issue?

[DanielAraldi]

@sbaiahmed1 👀👀👀

[sbaiahmed1]

I think this can be solved with an expo plugin or updating expo to a new version

[farmerpaul]

Okay, good to know. We're on Expo 53, and have been waiting one of our core dependencies to become compatible with Expo 54 before we can upgrade to it. I'll hold off on testing the new version of react-native-blur until we're able to switch to Expo 54. Thanks!