Demo App fails to build

[suyashcjoshi]

Hello,

I'm new to OpenTelemetry and wanted to see how the Android Demo App works but it failed to even build and gradle sync failed with this error: Caused by: org.gradle.api.artifacts.transform.VariantTransformConfigurationException: Could not isolate parameters com.android.build.gradle.internal.utils.D8BackportedMethodsGenerator$Parameters_Decorated@424cc05a of artifact transform D8BackportedMethodsGenerator

Any idea what is going wrong? Also if there are some more details about Demo App that will be helpful in understanding what the tools does and how it works. Thanks!

[LikeTheSalad]

Hi @suyashcjoshi - It seems to be related to AGP transformations. It would help to get some more info about your environment, such as the AGP and Kotlin plugin versions that you're using.

[breedx-splk]

@suyashcjoshi Are you running the gradle wrapper that is available in the demo-app subdirectory? It's not well documented, but the demo-app is a separate project that includes the root-level projects through includeBuild directive in settings.gradle.kts.

[suyashcjoshi]

Ok, seems like I had to open the whole repo in the Android Studio and couldn't just import and open the demo app which is weird as I don't need the full source code but at least that got rid of the nasty gradle error. Please feel free to close the issues if this is the fix.

Btw would love an even simpler demo or getting started tutorial as this is bit too complex. Many thanks!

[breedx-splk]

That's weird, and opposite of my experience. I have to open the demo-app (sub)project in Android Studio. Because it imports the parent project, the rest of the code shows up and is searchable/navigable. We chose to do it this way (rather than just depending on otel via maven) so that we could have a faster development cycle.

Btw would love an even simpler demo or getting started tutorial as this is bit too complex.

I appreciate that and thank you for sharing that opinion. Would you mind elaborating on what specific parts/aspects are too complex? The project setup? The demo app structure? Something else? Thanks!

[suyashcjoshi]

Sure, few things that will help: 1. Simplifying the project structure: Removing unnecessary dependencies or features and make sure project lives in it's own repo and can just be cloned in Android studio and gradle build gives to problem so it can just run.
2. Providing a step-by-step explanation in README or separate documentation: Breaking down the app logic, how opentelemetry works within the app to newbies like myself.
This will greatly help all developers looking to integrate open telemetry in their android apps.

[breedx-splk]

@suyashcjoshi thanks for the feedback. I think it's unlikely that we'll move the demo to its own repo -- if anything I think long term we would like it to be part of the otel demo repo...and like I said for now, it is convenient for otel android devs to have it living in the same repo.

The demo app is relatively young, so we can take this advice forward. Thanks again.