Bump Sentry Gradle plugin 6.10.0 → 6.12.0, SDK → 8.44.1

[romtsn]

Summary

Bumps the Sentry Android Gradle Plugin from 6.10.0 → 6.12.0, pins the SDK to 8.44.1, and bumps sentry-native-ndk from 0.14.2 → 0.15.1.

Supersedes #225 (which only covered 6.10.0 → 6.11.0 with no new features).

Version Changes

Component	Old	New
Sentry Android Gradle Plugin	6.10.0	6.12.0
Sentry Android SDK (auto-installed)	8.43.1	8.44.1 (pinned via autoInstallation)
sentry-native-ndk	0.14.2	0.15.1

Changelogs

• Gradle plugin 6.12.0
• Gradle plugin 6.11.0
• SDK 8.44.1
• SDK 8.44.0
• SDK 8.43.2
• sentry-native 0.15.1
• sentry-native 0.15.0

What's in the bump

Plugin 6.12.0:

• CLI bumped from v3.5.0 to v3.5.1

Plugin 6.11.0 fixes:

• Resolve sentry-cli path as a task input (fixes stale-path build failures with config cache)
• Defer telemetry default-org lookup to execution time (config cache improvement)
• Published POMs no longer declare transitive kotlin-stdlib dependency
• Normalize Linux ARM64 architecture name for bundled sentry-cli binary lookup

SDK 8.44.0 features:

• enableStandaloneAppStartTracing option — sends app start as standalone transaction with measurements and phase spans
• On Android 15+ (API 35), reports why OS started process via app.vitals.start.reason

SDK 8.44.1 fixes:

• Fix FirstDrawDoneListener leaking an OnGlobalLayoutListener per registration

SDK 8.43.2 improvements:

• DSN parsing performance improvement (custom string parsing replaces java.net.URI)
• Session Replay: fixes for Compose masking under DexGuard/R8 obfuscation

sentry-native 0.15.0:

• Opt-in async crash upload mode
• Linux symbolication of stack frames in crash daemon
• macOS: thread names in crash reports
• Increased SENTRY_CRASH_MAX_MODULES from 512 to 2048

sentry-native 0.15.1:

• Fix partial disk writes when streaming envelopes
• Android breadcrumb data sent as structured object instead of raw JSON string

New features implemented

1. Standalone App Start Tracing — Enabled via io.sentry.standalone-app-start-tracing.enable manifest entry. The SDK will now emit a dedicated "App Start" transaction (op: app.start) with app start measurements and phase spans (process.load, contentprovider.load, application.load, activity lifecycle), sharing the same traceId as the first activity transaction for trace linking.

2. SDK pinned to 8.44.1 — Added autoInstallation { sentryVersion.set(\"8.44.1\") } in the sentry {} block to ensure the latest SDK with bugfixes is used, rather than the plugin's bundled 8.44.0.

Features already covered in the codebase

• Feature Flags API (Sentry.addFeatureFlag) — already demonstrated in MyApplication.java with enable-dark-mode and new-checkout-flow flags
• Scope Attributes API (Sentry.setAttribute) — already demonstrated in MyApplication.java with customer.plan and customer.email
• Metrics API — already enabled via io.sentry.metrics.enabled=true manifest entry

Features skipped

1. SentrySQLiteDriver (SDK 8.44.1, experimental) — Requires androidx.sqlite:sqlite 2.5.0+ with the new SQLiteDriver interface. The app uses Room 2.6.1 which uses the legacy SupportSQLiteOpenHelper API; upgrading to Room 2.7+ would be required, and the project has an explicit warning against Room upgrades due to Saucelabs test compatibility.

2. sentry-native opt-in async crash upload (native 0.15.0) — This is a native C API feature (sentry_options_set_async_crash_upload) not exposed through the Android Java SDK.

Build verification

Build could not be fully verified in the CI environment due to network restrictions (403 from Google Maven). The Gradle configuration phase started successfully (Gradle wrapper resolved, daemon started) but could not download the Android Gradle Plugin artifact. The changes are version bumps and a manifest entry addition — structurally straightforward.

Files changed

• app/build.gradle — Plugin 6.10.0→6.12.0, sentry-native-ndk 0.14.2→0.15.1, added autoInstallation block
• app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml — Added io.sentry.standalone-app-start-tracing.enable meta-data entry

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Generated by Claude Code

[sentry]

📲 Install Builds

Android

🔗 App Name	App ID	Version	Configuration
Android	com.example.vu.android	24.12.26 (241226)	release
Android	com.example.vu.android	24.12.26 (241226)	debug
Android	com.example.vu.android	24.12.26 (241226)	release

⚙️ android Build Distribution Settings

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 0.00%. Comparing base (fbd7a20) to head (115d005).

Additional details and impacted files

@@          Coverage Diff          @@
##            main    #227   +/-   ##
=====================================
  Coverage   0.00%   0.00%           
=====================================
  Files         16      16           
  Lines        875     875           
  Branches      65      65           
=====================================
  Misses       875     875           

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[sdzhong]

• With Standalone App Start Tracing, the flagship EmpowerPlantActivity transaction is now in the same trace as the App Start transaction; this is expected behavior
• I don't see any App Start Cold metrics appearing in it, whereas I do in the current trace; this is not expected behavior

See screenshot:

LHS (current release), url
RHS (PR branch), url

P.S. The Average Cold App Start for the PR branch data appears empty in the Mobile Vitals dashboard (it shows as -- [empty]), which is not expected

[sdzhong]

It looks like enabling Standalone App Start Tracing may have also stopped TTFD from appearing on the graph

See screenshot; same LHS/RHS URLs as above

[sdzhong]

Related

1. fix(trace-view): show App Start Cold/Warm vitals for app.start transactions getsentry/sentry#118438
2. fix(mobile-vitals): include app.start in cold/warm start transaction.op conditions getsentry/sentry#118436
3. fix(trace): Expose slow/frozen frames rate vitals for EAP traces getsentry/sentry#118446