Failed to generate apk from Android studio 3.1.1

Question

When I try to generate a signed APK, I found this issue :

10:58 Generate Signed APK: Errors while building APK. You can find the errors in the \'Messa

Answer 1

Per the Android Studio docs, your top-level build.gradle ought to have the google() repository added. Be sure to add it to the repositories under buildscript AND allprojects.

The latter one is what I missed the first time I edited this today after upgrading and that led directly to a Could not find com.android.tools.lint:lint-gradle:26.1.1. when I tried to build a release APK.