Google App Invites: Google Play Services meta data tag?

Question

In the google app invites guide (https://developers.google.com/app-invites/android/guides/app), we are asked to put the following meta-data tag in the android manifest:

<meta-data
      android:name="com.google.android.gms.version"
      android:value="@integer/google_play_services_version" />

In the sample's android manifest, we cannot see this tag anywhere:

https://github.com/googlesamples/google-services/blob/master/android/appinvites/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml

Is there an error in the guide?

Answer 1

Kind of. It's obsolete. It used to be the case that you have to add that element to the manifest, but with the latest version of the Android Gradle tools, this is taken care of automatically by the Gradle plugin when you have the Google Play Services dependency.