Manifest merger failed, when adding the butterknife library

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.jakewharton:butterknife:10.0.0'
    annotationProcessor 'com.jakewharton:butterknife-compiler:10.0.0'
    implementation 'com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.71828'
    implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    implementation 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:28.0.0'
    implementation 'com.android.support.constraint:constraint-layout:1.1.3'
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.12'
    androidTestImplementation 'com.android.support.test:runner:1.0.2'
    androidTestImplementation 'com.android.support.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.0.2'

}

These are the dependencies, in build.gradle

Manifest merger failed : Attribute application@appComponentFactory value=(android.support.v4.app.CoreComponentFactory) from [com.android.support:support-compat:28.0.0] AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-91 is also present at [androidx.core:core:1.0.0] AndroidManifest.xml:22:18-86 value=(androidx.core.app.CoreComponentFactory). Suggestion: add 'tools:replace="android:appComponentFactory"' to element at AndroidManifest.xml:7:5-21:19 to override.

I wished to add a library to my project, it is called as ButterKnife library, before adding this library the project was fine, but as I added this library. Manifest merger failed error occurred.

What I have tried? I added these lines to my AndroidManifest.xml:

tools:replace="android:appComponentFactory"
android:appComponentFactory="whateverString"

But this generated another set of errors

Caused by: com.android.tools.r8.utils.AbortException: Error: Static interface methods are only supported starting with Android N (--min-api 24): void butterknife.Unbinder.lambda$static$0()

I tried removing butterknife library, and then it builds finely.

I also tried adding only one of those lines:

tools:replace="android:appComponentFactory"

This did nothing and produced yet another error:

Manifest merger failed with multiple errors, see logs

I tried Refractor->migrate to androidx, this created a new problem in Java file, which now says that it "cannot resolve symbol R"

So what should I do, I am following some course online for app development. And the person teaching this course does not seem to have these errors.

Issue

I think there is something wrong in the current version (latest) of butterknife. The simplest solution that I found for this problem is that change the version that butterknife applies to.

One possible solution

I changed this

implementation 'com.jakewharton:butterknife:10.0.0'
annotationProcessor 'com.jakewharton:butterknife-compiler:10.0.0'

to this

   implementation 'com.jakewharton:butterknife:7.0.1'
    annotationProcessor 'com.jakewharton:butterknife-compiler:7.0.1'

Why do this?

What we have done is that we now are going to use the older version of butterknife, the version which works.