Tips to Help You Migrate to Android Studio 3.0

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After a long period of expectation, Android Studio 3.0 is almost here.After 7 alpha versions of Android Studio 2.4, Google announced that changes are far too great and they will be incorporated into Android Studio 3.0. And then 9 alphas later, the new and improved Android Studio was born. So overall, there are quite a few changes.

Before you start googling your way just to end up where you started, I’ve assembled some tips that helped me get from a project that compiled on Android Studio 2.3 to a project that compiled on Android Studio 3.0.

BREAKING REPOSITORIES

Odds are Android Studio will refuse to compile because dependencies to Android libraries are not found…Huh…?

Failed to resolve: com.android.support:multidex:1.0.2

This, for example, was the error I got. You might see it differently, with a different support library perhaps, but the problem is still the same –Android’s own dependencies are nowhere to be found. So, crazy as it may seem, Android Studio needs you to fix its own libraries’ location.

This is because Android moved all of its repositories from jcenter to its own repository. And since Google is working closely with Gradle, Gradle 4.0 has introduced a shortcut to said repository.

Good thing Android Studio 3.0 forced you to update to Gradle 4.1, so that new shortcut is available.

Just go to your top level app build.gradle file and add the google shortcut:

buildscript { repositories {

google() jcenter()

} } allprojects {

repositories { google() jcenter()

} }

If for some reason you don’t have the newest Gradle or the shortcut isn’t working for you, you can simply put the full path yourself:

maven { url 'https://maven.google.com'

}

IN A FLAVORDIMENSION FAR FAR AWAY

Syncing your build.gradle file is about to fail for sure with the following error message:

Error:All flavors must now belong to a named flavor dimension.

Android Studio 3.0 introduces the concept of Flavor Dimensions to help you combine different flavors to one flavor.

Suppose you have an arsenal of apps, each pretty much doing the same but having their own themes. You use a flavor for each theme, get different APKs with different application ids and therefore upload different apps to the store.

But what do you do when you want to merge two themes together? Or add functionality to only a subset of themes?Or create one base theme from which all can derive?

Well, you have flavor dimensions.

The most basic approach, just to get you up and synching in the new environment, is to define a default flavor dimension –

flavorDimensions "foo" productFlavors {

... }

If you don’t do much else, each one of your existing flavors would be assigned the one flavor dimension you gave and everything will be as it was. So really, your only problem here is choosing the name for your default flavor (so it should take you no more than a couple of hours to resolve this issue 🙂 )

For future reference, the real fun begins when you define more than on flavor dimension, for example:

flavorDimensions "foo", "bar" productFlavors {

amazing { dimension "foo"

} awesome {

dimension "foo" } great {

dimension "bar" }

}

In this case, while we have defined 3 product flavors, we have actually only defined 2 – amazingGreat and awesomeGreat. Their sources, resources etc. are all combined giving precedence to those combing from ‘foo’ dimension (since it is mentioned first).

And just a quick note: Android Studio now also has missing dimension strategies and matching fallbacks in order to combine specific flavors from libraries (You can read more about it in release notes here and here).

The idea behind this strategy is very variant-oriented – unless you specify otherwise, app variants will only consume libraries’ matching variants

(so if you’ve got an awesomeGreatDebug variant in a library it would be taken only when compiling the awesomeGreatDebug app variant).

LET THE DEPRECATION WARNINGS BEGIN

You should be able to sync and even compile your project now. But you’ll still be faced with grave warning that you build.gradle is using deprecated attributes. And it’s always best to resolve issues while deprecated.

If this looks odd to you, then, well… it should. Using the compile configuration under the dependencies closure (section) is pretty basic

Configuration ‘compile’ in project ‘:app’ is deprecated. Use ‘implementation’ instead.

dependencies { implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:<version-number>' }

This is actually a Gradle change introduced in Gradle 3.4, but since the last mandatory Gradleversion was 3.3, it’s packed together with the headache of migrating to the new Android Studio. It’s easy to fix, as the error itself tells you to use ‘implementation’ and indeed that will work –

However, if you’re writing a library or an Instant App module / feature, this may not be the way to go.!

The old compile configuration has been split to two configurations – implementation and api.

Technically speaking, the old compile is much more similar to api.

The implementation configuration, the one recommended in the error message, is preferred.

Let’s say you add a mobile SDK or some other external library. Their interfaces are not going to change, unless you upgrade to a new version. This means that for all subsequent compilations shouldn’t care about the implementation itself and therefore there’s no need to recompile these dependencies every time.

You can therefore get a faster build.

Pay close attention when adding new mobile SDKs whose integration guide hasn’t been updated yet! 99% of the time the implementation configuration is what you need!

void someProjectMethod() { Library2.someL2Method();

}

Assume you’re using internal libraries or modules. Assume your project is dependent on a module called Library1 which in turn is dependent on a module called Library2. And your code uses Library2, since it’s internal, for example:

There’s a chance that you will change someL2Method at some point. Remove it, add parameters, anything. In this case, your project compilations need to recompile Library2 all over again if one of its interfaces / APIs has changed. In this case, you must use the apiconfiguration (equivalent to the old ‘compile’ configuration).

If you’re using the apk configuration, it has been renamed to runtimeOnly

If you’re using the provided configuration, it has been renamed to compileOnly

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BUT THAT’S JUST THE BASICS

And of course… Instant Apps SDK is finally here.

These quick fixes should get you and your project through compiling regularly. But your project may have even more complications:

Configuration for annotation processing has changed.

Plain JAR dependencies are now considered transitive dependencies. It shouldn’t have much effect on most project.

The Jack toolchain is now officially deprecated. If you were using it for Java 8 language features, they are now freely accessible.

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To fix any or more of these changes take a look at the official documentation here.

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