Firebase App Distribution - Could not find the APK. Make sure you build first by running ./gradlew assemble[Variant]

Question

I have recently updated the version of the Firebase Appdistribution Gradle plugin from 1.4.0 to 2.0.1.

Since then Jenkins started giving the build time error below:

Execution failed for task app:appDistributionUpload[Variant]. Could not find the APK. Make sure you build first by running ./gradlew assemble[Variant], or set the api Path parameter to point to your APK

This is my Gradle script on Jenkins:

... ./gradlew cleanBuildCache :app:testDebugUnitTest :app:appDistributionUpload[Variant] ...

Answer 1

Starting with version 1.4.1 Running appDistributionUpload{Variant} no longer automatically rebuilds the app.

https://firebase.google.com/support/release-notes/android#appdistro_gradle_plugin_v1-4-1

Updating the Gradle script by adding :app:assemble[Variant] before :app:appDistributionUpload[Variant] solved the issue in my case. Hope it will help others as well.