flutter run fails in incomprehensible ways when run on packages created with very old flutters

[Hixie]

flutter run failed with the following completely useless message:

* Error running Gradle:
Exit code 1 from: /Users/ianh/dev/dummy/android/gradlew app:properties:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Build file '/Users/ianh/dev/dummy/android/build.gradle' line: 20

* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating root project 'android'.
> A problem occurred configuring project ':app'.
   > Failed to notify project evaluation listener.
      > com.android.build.gradle.tasks.factory.AndroidJavaCompile.setDependencyCacheDir(Ljava/io/File;)V

* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.

* Get more help at https://help.gradle.org

BUILD FAILED in 0s

Please review your Gradle project setup in the android/ folder.

[Hixie]

This was with a package create with an old version of Flutter. When I tried flutter create to create an up to date package, I got told to run flutter doctor --android-licenses. Dunno if that's related.

[Hixie]

...then that told me to run /Users/ianh/Library/Android/sdk/tools/bin/sdkmanager --update.

[Hixie]

(The original package was so old that it didn't have a .metadata file.)

[hungrymonkey]

Hi Hixie,

I want to document a workaround.

As mentioned here, support for higher Android version was migrated to fix this issue
#16215

As mvran-google has mentioned, it is possible to open android/ in android-studio and fix build errors one by one until everything is fixed
#16215 (comment)

I want to document one more thing with platform channels.
I seem like the behavior is changed on OnMethodCall. The workaround is to add returns statements after success as mentioned by zoechi
#27014 (comment)

I hit this issue badly trying to update my plugin
https://github.com/hungrymonkey/mic_stream/tree/issue_2

[zoechi]

Related #14974, #12573, #12983, #9827

[eseidelGoogle]

I'm not sure we should worry too much about ancient Flutter packages. We could probably improve our error handling in the tool, but my gut tells me we should just close this?

Is there something still you'd like done here @Hixie? Otherwise speculatively closing. Thanks!

[github-actions]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you are still experiencing a similar issue, please open a new bug, including the output of flutter doctor -v and a minimal reproduction of the issue.