The apk that I build using gradlew assembleVariant builds OK, but for some reason the AndroidManifest.xml inside the apk is not in binary format. I can open it just fine in a text editor, which is unexpected. Other variants of my app don't have this issue and their manifests come out in binary format. I need it in binary format because that's the input that the next tool in the chain expects.
I am using Android gradle plugin 4.0.1. This wasn't an issue in 3.5.4.
Anyone have any ideas why this could be happening?
I was using android.useNewApkCreator=false which helped me get past another issue: Entry name 'AndroidManifest.xml' collided.
This is not a good fix though, because the resulting AndroidManifest.xml is not the one you would want anyway. Find the conflicting AndroidManifest.xml and either exclude it or incorporate it in your app. Specifically mine came from a dependency that used CordovaLib.