You’ll have to run Gradle’s “clean” task, which deletes the entire build directory.

When you see a build failure that mentions a generated file from the build directory, doing a clean build is a good first step. Two common errors are “Error converting byte to dex” and “R.layout.main Cannot Be Found/Cannot Resolve Symbol R”, meaning Android Studio is having trouble generating the R.java file for resources.

For instance, you can run into problems where you updated Dagger code or a resource file but Gradle didn’t notice, and tries to reuse invalid output files from a previous build, causing the build to fail. Unfortunately, Gradle sometimes misses code changes in input source files. When you see “UP-TO-DATE” beside a task name, it means Gradle is reusing the existing build outputs rather than rerunning the task. You can see which version of Gradle you’re using by looking at the dependencies block in your root-level adle: dependencies For example, you probably have a buildTypes block in your project’s adle file, which doesn’t exist in the base Gradle API but is used by the Android Gradle plugin to support building different versions (debug, release, etc) of your app from a single project. Android Studio uses the Android Gradle plugin, which adds features specific to the app build process. Gradle is flexible enough to build almost any type of software, and can be used for specific project types by adding a layer of conventions and prebuilt functionality through plugins. Each step is configurable, and all the Gradle-related files you see in an Android project - adle, gradle.properties, etc - are used to customize and configure the project’s build. At a high level, Grade’s build process includes compiling your source code into Dalvik bytecode (.dex files) and compiled resources, then combining the compiled files into an APK, and finally signing the APK.

The build directory and incremental buildsĪndroid Studio includes a powerful code editor and developer tools but rather than reinventing the wheel and managing a project’s build process as well, it delegates to an existing build automation tool: Gradle.

Photo by Mylon Ollila on Unsplash Table of Contents

Android studio build apk location