Ionic Android build error after updating cordova-plugin-x-socialsharing plugin

Question

I have an Ionic 3 application, where I just updated the cordova-plugin-x-socialsharing plugin.

Ionic info..

    $ ionic info

    Ionic:

       ionic (Ionic CLI)  : 4.5.0 (C:\Users\peter\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\ionic)
       Ionic Framework    : ionic-angular 3.6.1
       @ionic/app-scripts : 3.2.2

    Cordova:

       cordova (Cordova CLI) : 7.0.1
       Cordova Platforms     : android 6.2.3, ios 4.3.1, windows 5.0.0
       Cordova Plugins       : no whitelisted plugins (16 plugins total)

    System:

       Android SDK Tools : 26.1.1 (C:\Users\peter\AppData\Local\Android\sdk)
       NodeJS            : v10.15.0 (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe)
       npm               : 6.4.1
       OS                : Windows 10

I now get the following build error..

    * Where:
    Build file 'D:\dev\myapp\platforms\android\build.gradle' line: 252

    * What went wrong:
    A problem occurred evaluating root project 'android'.
    > Could not get unknown property 'ANDROID_SUPPORT_V4_VERSION' for object of type org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.dsl.dependencies.DefaultDependencyHandler.

At the line in build.grade, I have the following..

Also, in my package.json, I notice I now have the following..

"cordova-plugin-x-socialsharing": {
            "ANDROID_SUPPORT_V4_VERSION": "24.1.1+"
        },

I have got my port to Ionic 4 planned, where I will probably re-add all my platforms but until then, does anyone know how I can fix this problem?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The suggestion here is to downgrade to the version 5.4.0. As of writing this, the current version of the plugin is 5.6.3 though. So it's not really a fix for me, it's a temporary workaround. But I tried it, and it seems to work.

5.4.0 is the last version that has the version hardcoded in plugin.xml:

<framework src="com.android.support:support-v4:24.1.1+" />

Later versions use a variable, which doesn't seem to get resolved when Cordova creates the build.gradle file for Android:

<framework src="com.android.support:support-v4:$ANDROID_SUPPORT_V4_VERSION" />
<preference name="ANDROID_SUPPORT_V4_VERSION" default="24.1.1+"/>

see diff: 5.4.0...5.4.4