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Cordova Android 9.0.0 Released!
By: Bryan Ellis
29 Jun 2020

We are happy to announce that we have just released Cordova Android 9.0.0! This is one of Cordova's supported platforms for building Android mobile applications.

To upgrade:

cordova platform remove android
cordova platform add android@9.0.0

Release Highlights

  • Added Kotlin Support

    Kotlin is one of the newest statically typed languages for developing Android apps. It is designed to work fully with the existing language, Java.

    By default, Cordova has Kotlin disabled but it can be enabled with the GradlePluginKotlinEnabled preference in config.xml.

    Additionally, Kotlin’s coding style and version are configurable. By default, Cordova sets the coding style as official and uses version 1.3.50.

    Below is an example config.xml for enabling and configuring Kotlin.

      <preference name="GradlePluginKotlinEnabled" value="true" />
  <preference name="GradlePluginKotlinCodeStyle" value="official" />
  <preference name="GradlePluginKotlinVersion" value="1.3.50" />

    For plugin developers, it is recommended to ensure that the Kotlin files are placed into the platforms src/main/kotlin directory.

  • Added AndroidX Support

    AndroidX is the new and improved namespace for the Android Support Libraries. The original support libraries are no longer maintained.

    It is recommended to use AndroidX so that your app is running the latest support libraries but, by default, Cordova has AndroidX support disabled for compatibility with existing plugins.

    A lot of the Android supported plugins are still using the old support libraries which can not build when using the AndroidX support libraries. It is recommended to research each plugin to see if they support AndroidX before enabling this feature.

    It is recommended for plugin developers to start migrating to support AndroidX. App developers could also use Jetifier to automatically migrates their existing third-party libraries to use AndroidX.

    You can enable this feature by setting the AndroidXEnabled preference to true in config.xml.

      <preference name="AndroidXEnabled" value="true" />

    If you were previously using the cordova-plugin-androidx plugin to enable AndroidX support, this plugin is no longer needed with this preference flag.

    The cordova-plugin-androidx-adapter plugin can be used to migrate the legacy references to the new AndroidX references.

  • Added Google Services Support

    To use Google APIs or Firebase services, the Gradle plugin Google Services is required to be enabled when building your Android application.

    For plugin developers, this can be enabled by setting to the app's config.xml the GradlePluginGoogleServicesEnabled preference flag. From the plugin.xml file, you can do this by adding the following lines:

      <config-file target="config.xml" parent="/*">
      <preference name="GradlePluginGoogleServicesEnabled" value="true" />
      <preference name="GradlePluginGoogleServicesVersion" value="4.2.0" />
  </config-file>

  • Android Version Support Update

    • The default target SDK version is set to 29.
    • The minimum SDK version is set to 22.
    • The minimum supported Android version is 5.1.

    NOTE: because Cordova has increased the minimum SDK version to 22, we no longer support or test with Android 5.0 or lower.

  • Gradle and Gradle Plugin Version Support Update

    • Cordova has increased the default Gradle version to 6.5.
    • Cordova has increased the Gradle Plugin to version 4.0.0

Please report any issues you find at issues.cordova.io!

Full Changelog

  • GH-1005 chore: set AndroidX off by default
  • GH-971 fix: Accept multiple mime types on file input
  • GH-1001 fix: support both adaptive and standard icons at the same time
  • GH-985 fix: Plugin install fails when preview sdk is installed
  • GH-994 chore: cleanup yaml files
  • GH-999 chore: remove trailing spaces from Java sources
  • GH-992 chore: update some dependencies
  • GH-998 chore: remove trailing spaces from framework build files
  • GH-997 chore: remove trailing spaces from project template
  • GH-996 chore: remove trailing spaces from bat files
  • GH-995 remove trailing spaces from markdown files
  • GH-993 chore: update devDependencies
  • GH-987 breaking: reduce combined response cutoff to 16 MB
  • GH-988 major: Gradle 6.5 & Android Gradle plugin 4.0.0 updates
  • GH-990 chore: remove trailing spaces from app/build.gradle
  • GH-989 breaking: remove legacy/build.gradle from template
  • GH-978 fix: wait_for_boot waiting forever
  • GH-965 fix: Increased detectArchitecture() timeout
  • GH-962 breaking: Bump Android gradle plugin to 3.6.0
  • GH-948 feature: JVM Args flag
  • GH-951 fix: ANDROID_SDK_ROOT variable
  • GH-959 test: synced AndroidX gradle versions to the same version as the Android test
  • GH-960 feat: com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.5.3
  • GH-956 chore(npm): add package-lock.json
  • GH-958 chore(npm): add ignore list
  • GH-957 chore: various cleanup
  • GH-955 chore(eslint): bump package & apply eslint fix
  • GH-954 breaking(npm): bump packages
  • GH-953 chore(npm): use short notation in package.json
  • GH-823 fix: prevent exit fullscreen mode from closing application
  • GH-950 fix: removed redundent logcat print
  • GH-915 breaking: bump minSdkVersion to 22 and drop pre-Lollipop specific code
  • GH-941 fix: GH-873 App bundle builds to obey command-line arguments
  • GH-940 ci: drop travis & move codecov to gh-actions
  • GH-929 chore: updated README to reflect what Android requires more accurately, which is Java 8, not anything less, not anything greater. Java 1.8.x is required.
  • GH-937 fix: GH-935 replaced compare-func with native sort method
  • GH-939 fix: test failure with shebang interpreter in rewired files
  • GH-911 refactor: use es6 class
  • GH-910 refactor (eslint): use cordova-eslint
  • GH-909 chore: remove appveyor residual
  • GH-895 feat: add github actions
  • GH-842 refactor: remove shelljs dependency
  • GH-896 feat: add Kotlin support
  • GH-901 feat: add AndroidX support
  • GH-849 fix: cordova requirements consider the android-targetSdkVersion
  • GH-904 fix (adb): shell to return expected stdout
  • GH-792 feat: upgrade gradle to 6.1 & gradle build tools to 3.5.3
  • GH-902 chore: remove .project file & add .settings to gitignore
  • GH-900 refactor: simplify doFindLatestInstalledBuildTools
  • GH-751 feat: use Java package name for loading BuildConfig
  • GH-898 chore: rename gradle plugin google services preference options
  • GH-893 feat: add Google Services support
  • GH-709 feat: add version-compare library to compare build-tools versions properly.
  • GH-831 chore: ignore auto-generated eclipse buildship files
  • GH-848 breaking: increased default target sdk to 29
  • GH-859 breaking: removed unnecessary project name restriction
  • GH-833 chore: drop q module
  • GH-862 chore: replace superspawn & child_process with execa
  • GH-860 feat: don't filter gradle's stderr anymore
  • GH-832 chore: drop node 6 and 8 support
  • GH-890 chore: bump version to 9.0.0-dev
  • GH-697 chore: optimization code
  • GH-863 chore: removed comment that serves no purpose
  • GH-861 chore: update jasmine to 3.5.0
  • GH-858 chore: modernize our one E2E test
  • GH-854 chore: ensure to lint as many files as possible