Handling missing Android support-v4:{20-21} Jars

Some of the newer Android/Google libraries have been published with invalid dependency information. It looks like an endemic issue, but the ones that have caught me so far have been

• com.google.android.gms:play-services:6.1.71
• com.android.support:appcompat-v7:21.0.0

The problem is that these libraries declare a dependency on support-v4:20 or support-v4:21 but don't specify the type of that dependency. The default type for a dependency is JAR, but Google published support-v4:20 and 21 as AAR libraries.

This means that when you build, the build mechanism has no way of knowing that you really wanted to pull in support-v4:20 AAR and so will fail with missing dependencies.

This has been raised with the AOSP as Issue#72807 so please star it if it irritates you as much as me.

My suggestion for working around these are to define your own replacement artifacts that using the same AAR files but contain a POM defining valid dependencies. Don't forget to define them as an entirely new version. I have tagged mine as "-b" version

Here are those I am using:

For com.google.android.gms:play-services:6.1.71-b

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd" xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.google.android.gms</groupId>
  <artifactId>play-services</artifactId>
  <version>6.1.71-b</version>
  <packaging>aar</packaging>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.android.support</groupId>
      <artifactId>support-v4</artifactId>
      <version>20.0.0</version>
      <scope>compile</scope>
      <type>aar</type>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

For com.android.support:appcompat-v7:21.0.0-b

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd" xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"

    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>com.android.support</groupId>

  <artifactId>appcompat-v7</artifactId>

  <version>21.0.0-b</version>

  <packaging>aar</packaging>

  <dependencies>

    <dependency>

      <groupId>com.android.support</groupId>

      <artifactId>support-v4</artifactId>

      <version>21.0.0</version>

      <scope>compile</scope>

      <type>aar</type>

    </dependency>

  </dependencies>

</project>

NB if you have externally facing projects where you can't have a dependency on a play-services version that you have constructed yourself (with the correct dep), then you can manually exclude support-v4:jar from the play-services dep in your project, and then add the support-v4:aar dep yourself. Thanks to +Hugo Visser for this suggestion.

<dependency>

    <groupId>com.android.support</groupId>

    <artifactId>appcompat-v7</artifactId>

    <version>21.0.0</version>

    <type>aar</type>

    <exclusions>

        <exclusion>

            <groupId>com.android.support</groupId>
            <artifactId>support-v4</artifactId>

        <exclusion>

    <exclusions>

</dependency>

<dependency>

    <groupId>com.android.support</groupId>

    <artifactId>support-v4</artifactId>

    <version>21.0.0</version>
    <type>aar</type>

</dependency>