How do I resolve a “'generateDebugSources' not found in project” error?

Question

I was trying to add a dependency to my application and I accidentally modified the wrong build.gradle file and now my application no longer builds correctly.

This is my

Answer 1

Chris Deligan got it partially right.

Basically, you need to resolve the gradle dependencies so that Android Studio can correctly recognize that a generateDebugSources task does indeed exist in your :app (For me it was the other way around - I needed Android Studio to recognize that generateDebugSources does not exist).

Doing an include ':app' did resolve the problem for me, but that's because gradle wasn't resolving the dependencies earlier properly for me. Doing an include ':app' and rebuilding the project helped because Studio rebuilt those dependencies properly because of it. (Oh and removing it helps as well)

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IN Brief -

Do something that re-generates the dependencies. Ways to do that are:

1. include :app - Add or remove this from your project gradle file and do a rebuild.
2. gradle init - Running this from the terminal helped.

Answer 2

I fixed my issue; I discovered that new projects didn't have the issue with the gradle, so I made a new project and transferred all my src code files and it works fine again.

Answer 3

Had the same problem and fixed it by updating TO latest build-tools version:

buildToolsVersion '24.0.1'

OR

buildToolsVersion '24'

Answer 4

I had this same issue and luckily I had made a recent backup and I figured out that the build.gradle file was missing from the App Folder. I copied that back into my project under the /AppName/app/build.gradle and the error went away.

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'


android {
    compileSdkVersion 25
    buildToolsVersion "25.0.2"

    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.company.appname"
        minSdkVersion 15
        targetSdkVersion 25
        versionCode 25
        versionName "2.0"
    }
    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
}

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    testCompile 'junit:junit:4.12'
    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:25.1.0'
    compile project(':BaseGameUtils')
    compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:10.0.1'
    compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-plus:10.0.1'
    compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:10.0.1'
    compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ads:10.0.1'
}
apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services'

Answer 5

In Android Studio menu: Go to File -> Invalidate caches / restart

IMPORTANT NOTE: Take into account that it will also clear "Local History" if it's important to you.

Answer 6

I faced the same problem. This error occured because I unknowingly deleted the app build.gradle file ,so I created a new build.gradle file in my app directory and placed all the required code there then synced this file .The project successfully build after this.