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Android Gradle Plugin compatibility with Gradle and Android Studio

Suddenly my newly created projects started to complain:

Dependency ‘androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.6.1’ requires libraries and applications that depend on it to compile against version 33 or later of the Android APIs.

And really, dependency on app level build.gradle is androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.6.1 for newly generated projects:

pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/app$ grep appcompat build.gradle 
    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.6.1'
pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/app$ 

whereas in older projects had androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.5.1 in use instead, and are being built ok.
At some point something must have changed to make Android Studio use newer version for newly generated projects. I am now aware of what caused this.

Recommendation in the error messages was:

update this project’s version of the Android Gradle plugin to one that supports 33
update this project to use compileSdkVerion of at least 33
Additionally Gradle version must be upgraded to support selected AGP version

How on earth I am going to do that?

Solution

Turned out to be a nightmare to try obey the recommended actions. Below some details from along the road. Might be the easiest way is to upgrade Android Studio to recent version, as suggested on some posts along the way.

Tried to set up below configuration

	old	new	defined in (relative to project root)
androidx.appcompat:appcompat:	1.5.1	1.6.1	app/build.gradle
compileSdkVerion	32	33	build.gradle
AGP	7.2.0	7.4.2	build.gradle
Gradle	7.3.3	7.5.1?	gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties

Details: Disregarding recommendation’s order of actions, ended up on updating compiled sdk version to 33 first, left minSdk and targetSdk as they were:

pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/app$ grep Sdk build.gradle 
    compileSdk 33
        minSdk 23
        targetSdk 32
pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/app$

Build went trough, but gave below warning:

We recommend using a newer Android Gradle plugin to use compileSdk = 33

This Android Gradle plugin (7.2.0) was tested up to compileSdk = 32

This warning can be suppressed by adding
    android.suppressUnsupportedCompileSdk=33
to this project's gradle.properties

The build will continue, but you are strongly encouraged to update your project to
use a newer Android Gradle Plugin that has been tested with compileSdk = 33

App worked ok. Didn’t want to suppress warning, but wanted to upgrade AGP instead.

Per info available at Google AGP Maven pages, decided to use AGP 7.4.2, which was latest stablish at the time.

Did change using ‘File -> Project Structure’.
Change ends up into project level build.gradle, with module names suggesting in no way they are for AGP:

pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication$ grep 7.4.2 build.gradle
    id 'com.android.application' version '7.4.2' apply false
    id 'com.android.library' version '7.4.2' apply false
pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication$ 

Now I get error for the gradle version I have in use, not supporting AGP 7.4.2:

The project is using an incompatible version (AGP 7.4.2) of the Android Gradle plugin. Latest supported version is AGP 7.2.0

My gradle version is 7.3.3:

pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/gradle/wrapper$ grep distributionUrl gradle-wrapper.properties
distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-7.3.3-bin.zip
pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/gradle/wrapper$ 

Android Gradle plugin release notes tell 7.4. of AGP requires Gradle 7.5.
7.5.1 being the latest as shown in Gradle buildtool releases page

Changed gradle to 7.5.1:

pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/gradle/wrapper$ grep distributionUrl gradle-wrapper.properties
distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-7.5.1-bin.zip
pappa@pappa-ThinkPad-X270:~/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApplication/gradle/wrapper$

But still the same problem. Thus it seems to be Android Studio itself that supports AGP only upto 7.2.0, not Gradle.
And really, Chipmunk 2021.2.1 supports AGPs 3.2-7.2 as shown in (Android Gradle plugin and Android Studio compatibility)[https://developer.android.com/studio/releases#android_gradle_plugin_and_android_studio_compatibility]

So, options seem to be

Upgrade Android Studio to a current release, and hope my projects wouldn’t require major conversion work
Turn of the warning of This Android Gradle plugin (7.2.0) was tested up to compileSdk = 32
Change androidx.appcompat:appcompat: back to 1.5.1 for each newly created project
Find out why newly created projects started to use 1.6.1 version of androidx.appcompat:appcompat instead of 1.5.1.