Robolectric: Resources$NotFoundException: String resource ID with Android Gradle Plugin 3

Android Studio 3.0 Beta2
classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.0.0-beta3'
testCompile 'org.robolectric:robolectric:3.4.2'

Test class that I am using that fails to run:

@Config(constants = BuildConfig.class, sdk = Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP)
@RunWith(RobolectricTestRunner.class)
public class RecipeAdapterTest {
    private MainActivity activity;

    @Before
    public void setup() {

    activity = Robolectric.setupActivity(MainActivity.class);

    /* Also tried this same Error
     activity = Robolectric.buildActivity(MainActivity)
                .create()
                .resume()
                .get();
    */
    }

    @Test
    public void testActivityShouldNotBeNull() {
        assertThat(activity, is(notNullValue()));
    }
}

This is the stack trace of the error:

android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: String resource ID #0x7f0c0020

    at android.content.res.Resources.getText(Resources.java:274)
    at android.content.res.Resources.getString(Resources.java:360)
    at android.content.Context.getString(Context.java:376)
    at org.robolectric.shadows.ShadowActivity.getActivityTitle(ShadowActivity.java:100)
    at org.robolectric.shadows.ShadowActivity.callAttach(ShadowActivity.java:110)
    at org.robolectric.android.controller.ActivityController.attach(ActivityController.java:56)
    at org.robolectric.android.controller.ActivityController.of(ActivityController.java:25)
    at org.robolectric.Robolectric.buildActivity(Robolectric.java:98)
    at org.robolectric.Robolectric.buildActivity(Robolectric.java:94)
    at org.robolectric.Robolectric.setupActivity(Robolectric.java:102)
    at me.androidbox.busbybaking.adapters.RecipeAdapterTest.setup(RecipeAdapterTest.java:63)

In the Edit Configurations I have set the Working Directory to $MODULE_DIR$

Many thanks for any suggestion.

As mentioned by an engineer from Google team (most possibly Xavier Ducrohet), Robolectric has issues with AAPT2:

Robolectric is not compatible with aapt2.

Two options here.

First option - follow Robolectric guidelines for Android Studio 3.0+

Add the following to your build.gradle:

android {
  testOptions {
    unitTests {
      includeAndroidResources = true
    }
  }
}

Annotate your test with the Robolectric test runner:

@RunWith(RobolectricTestRunner.class)
public class SandwichTest {
}

Second option: disable AAPT2 adding following line into gradle.properties file:

android.enableAapt2=false

The Robolectric documentation states that the following configuration should be used with Android Studio 3.x:

android {
  testOptions {
    unitTests.includeAndroidResources true
  }
}

(for anyone that might be looking for a solution to a similar problem)

Be sure to use

RuntimeEnvironment.application

and not:

RuntimeEnvironment.systemContext

when you're trying to resolve resources "manually".

That's one case in which Resources$NotFoundException might show up with Robolectric.

Not a direct answer to the question, but if you are testing something that needs a context to query resources against I have found the following to work quite well:

ApplicationProvider.getApplicationContext()

(or RuntimeEnvironment.application -- but this is deprecated in favor of the above)

If your build fails due to an AAPT2 resource processing issue or you want to use Roboelectric, you can disable AAPT2 by setting android.enableAapt2=false in your gradle.properties file and restarting the Gradle daemon by running ./gradlew --stop from the command line.

Official guideline Android Studio 3.0 Release