Disable Manifest Merger in Android Gradle Build

Question

I am using the new gradle android buildsystem.

The project consists of two android library projects and one main project.

Using the ant build, the manifest merger must be enable in project.properties. But when using the gradle build system the manifest merger is enabled by default. How can i disable the manifest merger?

Answer 1

Edit: this is actually possible though indirectly, starting with 0.3

What you need to do is disable the processManifest task so that it doesn't run and tell the processResources where the manifest to use is:

android.applicationVariants.all { variant ->
    variant.processResources.manifestFile = file('src/main/AndroidManifest.xml')
    variant.processManifest.enabled=false
}

Note that if you are customizing the app package name through the DSL, you should keep the default manifest untouched in the default location to provide a consistent package name for the R classes, and then have your manually merged manifests somewhere else and point each variant processResources task to them.

Answer 2

This may help.

 android.applicationVariants.all{ variant ->
       variant.outputs.each { output ->
         output.processResources.manifestFile = file('AndroidManifest.xml')
         output.processManifest.enabled=false
       }
  }

Answer 3

For the 0.6.+ plugin you also have to change from buildVariants to applicationVariants:

android.applicationVariants.all { variant ->
    variant.processResources.manifestFile = file('src/main/AndroidManifest.xml')
    variant.processManifest.enabled=false
}

Answer 4

It doesn't look like these solutions work for the 1.0 plugin:

Could not find property 'processResources' on com.android.build.gradle.internal.api.ApplicationVariantImpl_Decorated@774f1d0b.

Anyone have an update? Our issue is a stray activity showing up in the final apk from recyclerview-v7:21.0.3:

<activity
   android:label="RecyclerViewTestActivity"
   android:name="android.support.v7.widget.TestActivity"/>

Update: It looks like manifest merging can be configured (see http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/user-guide/manifest-merger ). In this specific case, the TestActivity coming from the recyclerview-v7 library can be removed with:

<activity
    android:name="android.support.v7.widget.TestActivity"
    android:label="RecyclerViewTestActivity"
    tools:node="remove"/>

Thanks Filip.

Answer 5

For the 0.5.+ plugin you have to change from each to all like this:

android.buildVariants.all { variant ->
    variant.processResources.manifestFile = file('src/main/AndroidManifest.xml')
    variant.processManifest.enabled=false
}