Cannot resolve symbol 'test' in Android Support library

Question

I'm just starting to play around with Android and I'm having trouble with some androidTest examples that I've come across. Basically, I get a Cannot resolve symbol 'test' error message from Android Studio in the import statements for the InstrumentationRegistry and AndroidJUnit4 classes of my instrumented test file:

ExampleInstrumentedTest.java

package com.example.androidtestexample;

import android.content.Context;

import android.support.test.platform.app.InstrumentationRegistry;
import android.support.test.ext.junit.runners.AndroidJUnit4;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

import static org.junit.Assert.*;

@RunWith(AndroidJUnit4.class)
public class ExampleInstrumentedTest {
    @Test
    public void useAppContext() {
        // Context of the app under test.
        Context appContext = InstrumentationRegistry.getInstrumentation().getTargetContext();

        assertEquals("com.example.androidtestexample", appContext.getPackageName());
    }
}

As a consequence, the AndroidJUnit4 symbol of the @RunWith statement can't be resolved either and when I try to run the instrumentation test I get an 'Edit configuration' window with an 'Instrumentation runner class not specified' error.

I'm using Android Studio 3.5.3, but this example uses 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.2.3'. The app gradle.build is as follows (I had to add the aaptOptions statements as suggested here to get the minimum reproducible example working):

build.gradle (Module: app)

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

android {
    compileSdkVersion 25
    buildToolsVersion "24.0.2"
    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.example.androidtestexample"
        minSdkVersion 22
        targetSdkVersion 25
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"
        testInstrumentationRunner "android.support.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    }
    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }

    aaptOptions.cruncherEnabled = false
    aaptOptions.useNewCruncher = false

}

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:25.0.1'
    testCompile 'junit:junit:4.12'
    androidTestCompile 'junit:junit:4.12'
    androidTestCompile 'com.android.support.test.espresso:espresso-core:2.2.2'
}

As suggested in this question, I have double-checked that the debug build variant was selected and that the instrumentation test source file was in the src/androidTest/java/ folder.

I understand that this example is quite outdated and, from another of the answers to the aforementioned question and from this page, that the android.support.test package is deprecated and AndroidX should be used instead. However, from this page I also understand that it should still be possible to use the Android Support library for historical artifacts, hence my question:

Is there a way for me to fix this problem and run such old examples with the android.support.test package without needing to migrate them to AndroidX?

Cannot resolve symbol 'test' in Android Support library

0 Answers0