InAppBrowser Plugin Causing Build Error (and Solution)

[Barry_Johnson]

This morning I noticed the XDK started generating a build failure for me for Crosswalk (and for plain Android when I checked). Reviewing the contents of the logs, I noticed the following:

     [aapt] .../latest_xdk_base/assets/www/plugins/org.apache.cordova.inappbrowser/www/InAppBrowser.js: error: File is case-insensitive equivalent to: .../latest_xdk_base/assets/www/plugins/org.apache.cordova.inappbrowser/www/inappbrowser.js

BUILD FAILED
/Developer/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml:932: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/Developer/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml:950: null returned: 1

I thought this was odd, as I have had the InAppBrowser plugin in there forever, enabled via the standard project settings.

In any case, I noticed the plugin directory appeared to have been updated last night. I also checked, and building without the InAppBrowser plugin enabled worked just fine. Turned it back on and got a build failure.

I then went into the /plugins/org.apache.cordova.inappbrowser/www directory and changed the file named "inappbrowser.js" to "InAppBrowser.js". At this point the build proceeds normally and I just checked the built app on a phone and it works fine as well (and the InAppBrowser's window chrome seems to have been updated as well).

In any case, I am not certain what the root issue is but thought this might be helpful to other who may encounter the same or similar issues.

[PaulF_IntelCorp]

That is very odd. I tried to reproduce the issue, but was not able to. I checked the name of the file in my plugin directory and it is also lower case. Unless you are referencing those plugins in the plugin directory as a "local third-party plugin" they should have no impact on your build. They are currently only used by the Emulate tab (that may change in the future, but for now, that's their only purpose).

[Barry_Johnson]

The only third-party plugin I am running is EV's SocialSharing plugin. 

It is interesting you mentioned the emulate use of these files though. I typically avoid the emulator entirely, but I inadvertently clicked it last night, possibly around the same time those plugin directories show as being updated. If their only supposed use is for the emulator, I should be able to safely remove the directory then. I might give that a try as well.

I am happy to share with you my project if you'd care to try to reproduce it from that.

[Michael_O_]

If this issue persists, you might want to try the in app browser provided by intel.xdk

[Barry_Johnson]

@Michael - not sure what you are saying. The Cordova InAppBrowser is "provided by" the Intel XDK - under "Standard Plugins" - there is not an XDK-specific InAppBrowser plugin.

[PaulF_IntelCorp]

When you touched the Emulate tab it would have shown the "preparing sources" message, where it is doing some fiddling with those plugins directories (I'm not quite sure what it is doing). If you delete that plugins directory the Emulate tab will try to put them back (I'm not sure if it will only do it when you push the Emulate tab or even if you don't). But there's nothing wrong with deleting them, they should re-appear.

[David_K_6]

After many hours work, here is my current state of play on this problem, as of XDK build 2673:

I've been adding the In App Browser plug-in as a "Core plug-in" in the plug-in management section - this actually goes to one of two places, depending on version:

For version 0.x.x (the most recent is 0.6.0), it goes to org.apache.cordova.inappbrowser
For version 1.x.x (the most recent is 1.0.1), it goes to cordova-plugin-inappbrowser

Version 0.6.0 is fully working. It builds and runs successfully on both IOS and Android (I haven't tried others).

Version 1.0.1 fails to build out of the box for either IOS or Android.

If I rename the inappbrowser.js file to InAppBrowser.js as described above, v1.0.1 builds and works fine for IOS, but not Android.

All this is weird, because the XDK InAppBrowser sample works just fine with v1.0.1 on both IOS and Android without having to rename anything. The only change I have made to it is to include my IOS provisioning profile - and I've done a lot of checking to make sure that what I have in my real project is identical to what's in the InAppBrowser sample. I've noticed that the checksum in the intelxdk.config.ios.xml files are different, but that's about it.

Note that the APIs are slightly different. To use v0.6.0, you just use window.open(). For v1.0.1, you use cordova.InAppBrowser.open() (which you can hook to window.open, but isn't done by default).

Paul, it would be really great if we could find out where the Cordova build logs are. When a build fails, it would then be possible to inspect the log to track down what's really going wrong, rather than relying on trial and error as I've had to do. (The same comment has been made on this post and was never answered properly).

[PaulF_IntelCorp]

@David -- are you making sure that the device ready event has happened before you are using the inAppBrowser plugin? It won't work properly before the device ready event. Also, the fact that your checksums for that plugin are different when you include it in your project compared to the sample app doesn't sound like.

Regarding detailed build logs -- if you do not see a download link for a detailed build log there is no Cordova build log. When you get that detailed build log you ARE getting the Cordova build log. Thus, if you get the link in this image you are getting a link to the Cordova build log:

If you do not get that link following a [good or bad] build, something went wrong in our build system's pre-process step (setting up a new blank Cordova project, copying your code into that new blank project, adding your plugins into that new project, processing build instructions file, etc.).