Gradle fails with "Ambiguous method overloading for method java.io.File#<init>"
android, android-gradle-plugin, gradle
Solution
The error message has been changed in September 2014. It is now clearer and explicitely points out that the problem is that Gradle can't find the SDK; the rest of the answer still applies to old versions (<0.13) of the Gradle plugin.
This is due to Gradle not being able to find the SDK location, and thus failling when doing something that needs the Android SDK, such as getting the default Proguard file location.
Actually, this is what Gradle will tell you if you temporarily comment out that line:
SDK location not found. Define location with sdk.dir in the local.properties file or with an ANDROID_HOME environment variable.
You can fix it:
By defining the SDK location in `local.properties`: simply add `sdk.dir=/path/to/sdk` to that file.
By setting the SDK location in environment variable `ANDROID_HOME`: you just need to set the environment variable by adding `ANDROID_HOME=/path/to/sdk` before `gradle`.
Example: `ANDROID_HOME=/path/to/sdk gradle build`.
When using a version control system, it is perfectly fine to set the location locally in your own `local.properties`, as manually setting the environment variable every time you need to use Gradle would be annoying. Just make sure to not check it into your repository.
Problem
When `gradle build`ing my project, I'm getting this error: FAILURE: Build failed with an exception. Where: Build file 'App/build.gradle' line: 45 What went wrong: A problem occurred evaluating project ':App'. Ambiguous method overloading for method java.io.File#. Cannot resolve which method to invoke for [null, class java.lang.String] due to overlapping prototypes between: [class java.lang.String, class java.lang.String] [class java.io.File, class java.lang.String] Said line is the first `proguardFile` rule: ``` buildTypes { release { debuggable false jniDebugBuild false signingConfig signingConfigs.(System.getenv("SIGNING_CONFIG") ?: "release") runProguard true proguardFile getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt') proguardFile 'proguard-rules.txt' } } ``` I haven't got any `local.properties` file, nor opened the project in Android Studio. What is wrong with my project? How can I fix this error?