Could not find com.android.support:appcompat-v7:25.3.1

Question

I suddenly started getting this error when trying to build. This was all working a few weeks ago with no changes that I know of. The issue seems to be related to react

Answer 1

I've had the same problem (appcompat-v7:25.3.1), on an android project, but not using react.

I first tried to clean the gradle cache (~/.gradle/caches), like explained here, but it didn't help.

Then I looked at the SDK Manager.
Android Support libraries are normally installed via sdkmanager. The libraries are then stored in a local maven repository : <SDK_HOME>/sdk/extras/android/m2repository/.

For example, for appcompat-v7 the list of versions installed is in <SDK_HOME>/sdk/extras/android/m2repository/com/android/support/appcompat-v7/maven-metadata.xml.
So, for the Android Support Repository (revision: 47.0.0), the last version was normally 25.3.1.

To fix my problem, I had to uninstall the Android Support Repository via the SDK Manager, then reinstall it.

I also found another way to fetch support libraries : remotely. After reading here (https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/support-library/setup.html#add-library) and modifying <PROJECT_ROOT>/build.gradle like this :

allprojects {
    repositories {
        jcenter()
        maven {
            url "https://maven.google.com"
        }
    }
}

Then I tried to use a newer version of appcompat-v7:25.4.0 that was not in my local maven repository, and it worked !
The list of this Google Maven repository's versions of this library can be seen there : https://dl.google.com/dl/android/maven2/com/android/support/appcompat-v7/maven-metadata.xml.

Answer 2

Since gradle doesn't support declaring repositories on a per-artifact basis yet.

I modified my build.gradle (not app/build.gradle) to force all dependency to react-native to specific version:

allprojects {
     configurations.all {
       resolutionStrategy {
         eachDependency { DependencyResolveDetails details ->
           if (details.requested.group == 'com.facebook.react' && details.requested.name == 'react-native') {
                def file = new File("$rootDir/../node_modules/react-native/package.json")
                def version = new groovy.json.JsonSlurper().parseText(file.text).version
                details.useVersion version
           }
         }
       }
     }
  }