fix(android): conditionally add Cordova

[alexgerardojacinto]

⚠️🤖 AI-Assisted development with Claude Code 🤖⚠️

Description

• Introduces android/capacitor-cordova/ as a dedicated Gradle module (:capacitor-cordova-android) containing the Cordova bridge adapter classes (e.g. CordovaPlugin). This mirrors the iOS architecture where CapacitorCordova is a separate pod/SPM product, distinct from the main Capacitor module.

• The org.apache.cordova:framework Gradle dependency and the Cordova-specific ProGuard rule are removed from @capacitor/android. The new module owns both. android/settings.gradle is updated to declare both :capacitor-android and :capacitor-cordova-android for standalone builds.

• The CLI is updated to conditionally include :capacitor-cordova-android in the generated capacitor.settings.gradle and capacitor.build.gradle only when Cordova plugins are present, alongside the existing conditional inclusion of :capacitor-cordova-android-plugins. With no Cordova plugins installed, neither module is included — the built APK contains no org.apache.cordova classes and cordova-android does not appear in the Gradle dependency graph.

• Extra: Fixes a bug in Bridge.java where isDeployDisabled() and shouldKeepRunning() looked up the Cordova plugin by the name "__CordovaHandle", which was never registered anywhere. The correct name is "__CordovaPlugin", matching the @CapacitorPlugin annotation in CordovaPlugin.java. Before this fix, both methods always fell through to their default return values regardless of the DisableDeploy and KeepRunning preferences in config.xml.

Change Type

• Fix
• Feature
• Refactor
• Breaking Change
• Documentation

Rationale / Problems Fixed

• Cordova classes and dependencies don't need to be included if there are no Cordova plugins present.

Tests or Reproductions

• Tested with simple Capacitor app:
  • Started with a simple Android app without any Cordova plugins. Built the app and confirmed that the cordova-android Gradle dependency isn't present, and also that the org.apache.cordova package with the Cordova classes isn't present either.
  • Then installed a Cordova plugin (e.g. cordova-plugin-device) and confirmed that the Gradle dependency and Cordova classes are now present, and that the app worked properly (calling the plugin works).

Screenshots / Media

Platforms Affected

• Android
• iOS
• Web

Notes / Comments

[ItsChaceD]

I tried installing in a test app and then adding a cordova plugin, and it failed with the error:

 > Could not resolve project :capacitor-cordova-android.
     Required by:
         project :app
      > No matching variant of project :capacitor-cordova-android was found.

I believe this can be resolved by adding the new src dependencies to the android/package.json. To verify I ran npm pack --dry-run and the tarball contains none of the new capacitor-cordova/* files.

So when a user installs @capacitor/android from npm and adds a Cordova plugin, the CLI writes:

include ':capacitor-cordova-android'
project(':capacitor-cordova-android').projectDir = new File('../node_modules/@capacitor/android/capacitor-cordova')
include ':capacitor-cordova-android-plugins'
project(':capacitor-cordova-android-plugins').projectDir = new File('./capacitor-cordova-android-plugins/')

but that directory will not exist in node_modules, so Gradle sync will fail with the missing project error.

I was able to resolve this locally by adding this to the files entry in the android/package.json:

"capacitor-cordova/build.gradle",
"capacitor-cordova/proguard-rules.pro",
"capacitor-cordova/src/main/",

(although not sure if we need all of these)

[alexgerardojacinto]

@ItsChaceD you're right, me and Claude missed that 😅 I didn't test with npm pack and the tarball and I should have to make sure

I did the changes now, can you check again?