react-native-safe-area-context throw `Unresolved reference:` error

Question

While trying to upgrade react-native-navigation I got the following error, after upgrading react-native-safe-area-context

Note: Recompile with -Xlint:deprecation for details.
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaUtils.kt: (12, 34): Unresolved reference: R
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaUtils.kt: (15, 34): Unresolved reference: getInsets
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaUtils.kt: (16, 24): Unresolved reference: Type
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaUtils.kt: (17, 28): Unresolved reference: Type
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaUtils.kt: (18, 28): Unresolved reference: Type
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaUtils.kt: (55, 50): Unresolved reference: R
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaView.kt: (8, 37): Unresolved reference: FabricViewStateManager
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaView.kt: (9, 37): Unresolved reference: FabricViewStateManager
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaView.kt: (19, 66): Unresolved reference: HasFabricViewStateManager
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaView.kt: (24, 41): Unresolved reference: FabricViewStateManager
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaView.kt: (26, 3): 'getFabricViewStateManager' overrides nothing
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaView.kt: (26, 45): Unresolved reference: FabricViewStateManager
e: /home/me/myProject/node_modules/react-native-safe-area-context/android/src/main/java/com/th3rdwave/safeareacontext/SafeAreaViewManager.kt: (71, 10): Unresolved reference: fabricViewStateManager

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

My Build-Script:

buildscript {
    ext {
        buildToolsVersion = "29.0.2"
        minSdkVersion = 16
        compileSdkVersion = 29
        targetSdkVersion = 29
    }
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath('com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.5.3')
    }
}

Answer 1

Short Solution:

If you use ReactNative <= 0.63, install react-native-safe-area-context in V3 (e.g 3.4.1), as it's not compatible with v4 of safe-area-context

---

Long Painfull journey, that also fix some other of my errors on the way:

This helps me to solve it:

First, set your buildscript-version:

• minSdkVersion = 24 (That is Android 7 [nougat])
• targetSdkVersion =
• compileSdkVersion = 31 (set latest possible here)

Explaination what those Versions do: | A header | Another header | | -------- | -------------- | | minSdkVersion | set lowest Android-Version you want to support with your app. But keep in mind, that your app’s minSdkVersion must be at least as high as your dependencie-requirements
The Google Play Store also use this to determine which of a user’s devices an app can be installed on | | targetSdkVersion | This is the main way Android provides forward compatibility by not applying behavior changes unless the targetSdkVersion is updated | | compileSdkVersion| is the Version your app will be compiled with. Changing this Value does not change runtime behavior, your compileSdkVersion is not included in your APK |

If you want to read more about this, see here

NOTE: If you increase the compileSdkVersion, make sure, you've also installed the new SDK at your PC. In my case I missed that and got a non helping error like:

* Where:
Build file '/home/me/myProject/android/app/build.gradle' line: 130

* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating project ':app'.
> No signature of method: build_bzoaxr1mlfb80yiyz2yt0w97u.android() is applicable for argument types: (build_bzoaxr1mlfb80yiyz2yt0w97u$_run_closure1) values: [build_bzoaxr1mlfb80yiyz2yt0w97u$_run_closure1@1068678f]

E.g. in Android-Studio it looks like this:

Then have a look to upgrade gradle-plugin.

https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/gradle-plugin.html#updating-gradle

After upgrading Gradle, I got this error:

10:01   Gradle sync failed: Could not get unknown property 'compile' for configuration container of type org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.configurations.DefaultConfigurationContainer. (3 s 273 ms)

So I've changed from configurations.compile to implementation in android/app/build.gradle:

// Run this once to be able to run the application with BUCK
// puts all compile dependencies into folder libs for BUCK to use
task copyDownloadableDepsToLibs(type: Copy) {
    from configurations.implementation
    into 'libs'
}

Then the gradle-sync succeed without error.

As I did this in android studio I've cleared the project buy run > clean project, but you also can go to /android and run ./gradlew clean

But as I've tried to start the Application, I got an issue. After some search on stackoverflow, the cause seems to be, that RN still not compatible with Gradle7. So back to 6.9:

cd /android &&  ./gradlew wrapper --gradle-version 6.9

I've also had to change build:gradle-tools to 4.2.2

dependencies {
        classpath('com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.2.2')
}