Compile your React-Native or Android app with the latest Android build-tools

With the release of Gradle 3 and the great performance boost it comes with, it’s very tempting to update like so:

1. in your root build.gradle, update the Gradle plugin so that it uses Gradle 3+:

   ...
   dependencies {
    classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.3.0'
   ...
   

2. in your app/build.gradle, update the build tools to the latest (25), because it’s mandatory to support Gradle 3+:

   ...
   android {
    compileSdkVersion 23
    buildToolsVersion '25.0.2'
   ...
   

3. optionaly, if you have set distributionUrl in your gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties file, you may want to replace it with:

   distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-3.5-bin.zip
   

Sadly, you’ll very much likely encounter this sort of error: The SDK Build Tools revision (23.0.1) is too low for project ':react-native-vector-icons'. Minimum required is 25.0.0. That’s because one of your dependency (here, react-native-vector-icons) uses an old build tools version.

The process of updating the dependency (make a PR, be reviewed, be merged, and be published) can take a long time. Fortunately, you can overwrite the build tools version of your dependencies. To do so, copy and paste in your root build.gradle:

ext {
    compileSdkVersion = 23
    buildToolsVersion = '25.0.2'
}

subprojects { subproject ->
    afterEvaluate{
        if((subproject.plugins.hasPlugin('android') || subproject.plugins.hasPlugin('android-library'))) {
            android {
                compileSdkVersion rootProject.ext.compileSdkVersion
                buildToolsVersion rootProject.ext.buildToolsVersion
            }
        }
    }
}

And in your app/build.gradle, replace:

...
android {
    compileSdkVersion rootProject.ext.compileSdkVersion
    buildToolsVersion rootProject.ext.buildToolsVersion
...

Congratulations, you can now enjoy Gradle 3 build against the latest version of Android build-tools, thus boosting your compilation time. For example, in one of my company’s React Native application, it now takes only 10 seconds when no changes were made!

This article is also available on BAM’s Tech blog.