What do I change in my build.gradle to work with Android API 25

Question

I am currently working with an Android project that originally using Android API version 31; however, I want my app to work on API version 25, so in the build.gradle, I changed compileSDK to 25. However, building the app fails because of mismatched dependencies. The app is currently compiled against android-25, but there are still dependencies that require on version 31 libraries.

How do I go about adjusting the dependencies to fit Android API 25? Also, If I could get a hold of an Android project that already had Nougat's respective dependencies and it compiled correctly that would be nice too, but new Android Studio projects only provide this even when I specify API 25.

This is one of the issues raised during build. This dependency happens to be specified in my build.gradle, but there are other issues that are not.

1.  Dependency 'androidx.navigation:navigation-fragment:2.5.3' requires libraries and applications that
      depend on it to compile against version 31 or later of the
      Android APIs.

      :app is currently compiled against android-25.

This is my build.gradle

plugins {
    id 'com.android.application'
}

android {
    namespace 'com.example.zebcpu'
    compileSdk 25

    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.example.zebcpu"
        minSdk 25
        targetSdk 25
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"

        testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    }

    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }
    buildFeatures {
        viewBinding true
    }
}

dependencies {

    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.5.1'
    implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.7.0'
    implementation 'androidx.constraintlayout:constraintlayout:2.1.4'
    implementation 'androidx.navigation:navigation-fragment:2.5.3'
    implementation 'androidx.navigation:navigation-ui:2.5.3'
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.13.2'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.ext:junit:1.1.4'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.5.0'
}

I tried to compile my project against Android API 25, but there were dependencies that required API 31.

Answer 1

compileSdk and targetSdk are usually given latest values for it to work on devices that have more recent versions. Given minSdk 25, your app will work starting from sdk versions 25 onwards.

I would recommend you update compileSdk and targetSdk to a more recent version since the dependency androidx.navigation:navigation-fragment:2.5.3 requires compile version 31+ for its library to work.