Cordova 6.4.0 Android error when building release apk

Question

I had a project working well on cordova 6.3.1 .

Then I updated cordova and my project to 6.4.0 . After this, first time I built, gradle got automatically updated too.

Now I am experiencing an important issue:

I need to include the keystore and alias passwords in the build.json file or the release apk generation fails with error.

I use a build.json file like this:

{
"android": {
    "debug": {
        "keystore": "C:\\Path\\To\\Keystores\\debug.keystore",
        "storePassword": "debugpass",
        "alias": "thedebugalias",
        "password" : "debugpass",
        "keystoreType": ""
    },
    "release": {
        "keystore": "C:\\Path\\To\\Keystores\\theapp.keystore",
        "storePassword": "",
        "alias": "thealias",
        "password" : "",
        "keystoreType": ""
    }
}    

}

And then run this command to generate the release apk:

cordova build android --release --buildConfig=build.json

Until now, this worked well and it prompted me to enter both keystore and alias passwords. And then built the apk ok.

After upgrading to Cordova 6.4.0, it doesn't work anymore. It never prompts for the passwords, and then the building process fails because "the keystore has been tampered with or the password is incorrect".

If I include the passwords in the build.json file, the release apk gets generated ok, since it already has the passwords there and doesn't need to prompt for them.

I don't like having the keystore passwords in plain text in the build.json file. Has anyone experienced this same issue? Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks.

EDIT: I noticed another problem. It is not showing my icons and splash screens. EDIT: This last problem, about not showing icons and splash screens, is a bug in the new Cordova version and it is being resolved https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CB-12077

Answer 1

This issue has been solved: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CB-12159

As of now you can use cordova platform add android@6.2.0-nightly.2016.12.9.6c60dc5d or cordova platform add https://github.com/apache/cordova-android

Keep in mind that the second command adds the latest version and it may introduce other bugs....

In the future you may use cordova platform add android@6.2.0 but as of now 6.2.0 does not exist. (Check here: https://github.com/apache/cordova-android/releases)

Answer 2

Can you put your password into your build.json and see if works.

{
   "android": {
     "release": {
         "keystore": "path\\to\\keystore.keystore",
         "storePassword": "password",
         "alias": "alias",
         "password" : "password",
         "keystoreType": ""
     }
   }
}

I am on the same version as yourself, and this is my build.json.

I then just change to release and build solution to get release.apk

I know cmd4life, apologies if offended!

Answer 3

Try changing build.gradle' if (task.name == 'validateReleaseSigning') to if (task.name == 'assembleRelease').
This is probably related to the gradle version update in recent cordova-android updates.

Update: It seems that validateReleaseSigning task name was changed to validateSigningRelease in the newer Gradle version :\

So, the issue should be fixed in a next platform release (current is 6.2.0-dev).

Update #2: The PR was merged so you can use cordova platform add https://github.com/apache/cordova-android for now (beware of unreleased versions though).