[Bug]: Configuration Cache is breaking because of Google's OSS Licenses plugin

[SimonMarquis]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Is there a StackOverflow question about this issue?

• I have searched StackOverflow

What happened?

Google's OSS Licenses plugin flags its task as notCompatibleWithConfigurationCache() (not sure why but it has almost always been that way):

https://github.com/google/play-services-plugins/blob/221054395faf95cae5c77a6f1f3446f8b6cbfb2d/oss-licenses-plugin/src/main/groovy/com/google/android/gms/oss/licenses/plugin/OssLicensesPlugin.groovy#L56

Unfortunately, this means the entire configuration cache is discarded on each build that triggers it (e.g. local builds of the :app module).

You can see here an example of it: https://youtu.be/JFmGwHrIt84?t=1011 (👋 @ljacomet) and the task being listed at 19min 32s in the video.

I'll open a PR to only apply this plugin on CI builds where configuration cache is not relevant yet.

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Also, fwiw this plugin is currently quite broken as it does not respect edge-to-edge, and does not seem to be taken very seriously :/ long standing issues not being acknowledged or actively worked on:

• Support for Configuration cache google/play-services-plugins#246
• oss-licenses-plugin is not edge-to-edge ready google/play-services-plugins#296

@dturner would you be open to a lib migration to something more actively maintained?
I'm looking at cashapp/licensee, which has been already mentionned here:

• [Bug]: Configuration cache disabled due to *OssLicensesTask  #1022

This would require a bit of code for the display part, but it would allow this project to be:

• configuration-cache compatible
• Proper light/dark theme support based on the app state
• Compose UI (and extensible, it would not be hard to make something cleaner than what the plugin does at this time)
• Validation task on third party licenses (similar in spirit to what we do with the badging process for the manifest and dependency-guard for the dependencies)

Here is what it could look like (PR in one of my project where I did the migration a while ago)

🌑	☀️

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