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REACT NATIVE FIXES BUILD CHAOS, ADOPTS ANDROID GRADLE 9
By RepoJournal · Filed · About Meta
React Native's CI is back online after a gradle.properties formatting bug broke template testing, while the team simultaneously lands the Android Gradle Plugin v9 migration that removes legacy dependencies and cuts build complexity.
The template testing job was silently failing because a missing line break in gradle.properties concatenated config lines into garbage [1]. One character fix, massive CI relief. In parallel, React Native is pushing through AGP v9 adoption across the entire codebase [2], deprecating old APIs and modernizing the build graph in a way that pays dividends immediately. The RAM bundle decoder just got lighter by dropping the folly::Endian dependency entirely [3], replacing it with a simple inline implementation that cuts bloat and tightens the dependency story. On the rendering side, a text decoration regression on Android got patched [4] where custom canvas drawing was enforcing a 1.5dp minimum thickness that never existed in the native framework spans, making underlines visibly thicker than they should be. Finally, UIManagerModule's Kotlin conversion revealed a fun interface opportunity [5] that enables SAM conversion in callers, a small ergonomic win for consuming code.
Action items
- → If you maintain Android builds for React Native, pull the AGP v9 changes and test immediately - this is the foundation for next quarter's performance work facebook/react-native [plan]
- → Upgrade to the text decoration fix if you're seeing thicker underlines or strikethrough on Android facebook/react-native [monitor]
- → Watch the folly dependency removal for downstream impacts - this simplifies the native build story facebook/react-native [monitor]
References
- [1] fix: add line break to gradle.properties for template testing (#57107) facebook/react-native
- [2] feat: adopt AGP v9 (#57038) facebook/react-native
- [3] Remove folly::Endian::little from JSIndexedRAMBundle (#57109) facebook/react-native
- [4] Fix text decoration line thickness regression on Android (#57111) facebook/react-native
- [5] Make CustomEventNamesResolver a fun interface for SAM conversion (#57112) facebook/react-native
FAQ
- What changed in Meta on June 8, 2026?
- React Native's CI is back online after a gradle.properties formatting bug broke template testing, while the team simultaneously lands the Android Gradle Plugin v9 migration that removes legacy dependencies and cuts build complexity.
- What should Meta teams do about it?
- If you maintain Android builds for React Native, pull the AGP v9 changes and test immediately - this is the foundation for next quarter's performance work • Upgrade to the text decoration fix if you're seeing thicker underlines or strikethrough on Android • Watch the folly dependency removal for downstream impacts - this simplifies the native build story
- Which Meta repositories shipped on June 8, 2026?
- facebook/react-native