Gradle build fails with build tools 31.0.0

[JuliusM]

@zumwalt

Gradle 4.0.1 is not supported for builds to the play store, and the lowest build allowed now is SDK 30 which requires Gradle 7.x and higher even if you succeed in rolling back the build tools, your project can’t deploy to the play store. Export your package out and bring it into Android Studio for update and rebuild, but that doesn’t seem to be compliant between Unity plugins and latest SDK 30 with the latest Gradle. Unfortunate side affect of Play Store latest requirements, ran into this brick wall the hard way for new projects.

You are mixing a few things up. Android SDK has multiple components. Build-tools is one of them, however build tools version 30 is not required by the Play store. What they require is for the apps to target API level 30, which is “platforms” component in the SDK. It is possible to use build-tools version 29 and then have platforms api level 30 installed and used as a target API level.