A failure occurred while executing com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks

Question

I am getting this error while I am building APK.

Cause 1: org.gradle.workers.internal.DefaultWorkerExecutor$WorkExecutionException: A failure occurred while          


        

Answer 1

You may get an error like this when trying to build an app that uses a VectorDrawable for an Adaptive Icon. And your XML file contains "android:fillColor" with a <gradient> block:

res/drawable/icon_with_gradient.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<vector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:aapt="http://schemas.android.com/aapt"
    android:width="96dp"
    android:height="96dp"
    android:viewportHeight="100"
    android:viewportWidth="100">

    <path
        android:pathData="M1,1 H99 V99 H1Z"
        android:strokeColor="?android:attr/colorAccent"
        android:strokeWidth="2">
        <aapt:attr name="android:fillColor">
            <gradient
                android:endColor="#156a12"
                android:endX="50"
                android:endY="99"
                android:startColor="#1e9618"
                android:startX="50"
                android:startY="1"
                android:type="linear" />
        </aapt:attr>
    </path>
</vector>

Gradient fill colors are commonly used in Adaptive Icons, such as in the tutorials here, here and here.

Even though the layout preview works fine, when you build the app, you will see an error like this:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':app:mergeDebugResources'.
> A failure occurred while executing com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks.Workers$ActionFacade
   > Error while processing Project/app/src/main/res/drawable/icon_with_gradient.xml : null

(More info shown when the gradle build is run with --stack-trace flag):

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.android.ide.common.vectordrawable.VdPath.addGradientIfExists(VdPath.java:614)
    at com.android.ide.common.vectordrawable.VdTree.parseTree(VdTree.java:149)
    at com.android.ide.common.vectordrawable.VdTree.parse(VdTree.java:129)
    at com.android.ide.common.vectordrawable.VdParser.parse(VdParser.java:39)
    at com.android.ide.common.vectordrawable.VdPreview.getPreviewFromVectorXml(VdPreview.java:197)
    at com.android.builder.png.VectorDrawableRenderer.generateFile(VectorDrawableRenderer.java:224)
    at com.android.build.gradle.tasks.MergeResources$MergeResourcesVectorDrawableRenderer.generateFile(MergeResources.java:413)
    at com.android.ide.common.resources.MergedResourceWriter$FileGenerationWorkAction.run(MergedResourceWriter.java:409)

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The solution is to move the file icon_with_gradient.xml to drawable-v24/icon_with_gradient.xml or drawable-v26/icon_with_gradient.xml. It's because gradient fills are only supported in API 24 (Android 7) and above. More info here: VectorDrawable: Invalid drawable tag gradient