cli: A project with custom root fails at: cli-platform-android/native_modules.gradle' line: 191

I am trying to upgrade to 60.4, and introduced the ‘autolinking’ capability by modifying my settings.gradle and app/build.gradle. Platform is Linux, RN platform is android only, cli is 2.8.0.

With that change, however I cannot run any gradle commands (not even gradlew clean):

bash gradlew clean

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Script '/home/v/myproj/mob/rn.common/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli-platform-android/native_modules.gradle' line: 191

* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating settings 'myapp1b'.
> Cannot get property 'packageName' on null object

The cli version is latest, 2.8.0 The line where it is failing, trying to parse json output from running react-native-config Line 191: this.packageName = json["project"]["android"]["packageName"]

When I run PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH react-native config

I can see that in its output [“project”][“android” is indeed null.

...
"platforms": {
    "ios": {},
    "android": {}
  },
  "haste": {
    "providesModuleNodeModules": [
      "react-native"
    ],
    "platforms": [
      "ios",
      "android"
    ]
  },
  "project": {
    "ios": null,
    "android": null
  }

But why, and what do I need to do to fix it? It seems that applyNativeModulesSettingsGradle relies on it, and that’s why my build completely stopped at the moment.

Additional info:

cat react-native.config.js <-- this is root of my RN code. this dir also has index.android.js

module.exports = {
  project: {
    ios: {},
    android: {},
  },
  assets: ['./src/js.app/img'],
};

cat settings.gradle

//do  npm install @react-native-community/cli@2.8.0 --save-dev
//in case this component is not installed directly by RN

rootProject.name = 'myapp1b' //this rootProjectName used by community cli. so I am setting to be what my gradle defined as project.name (which is directory name of my proj, or equal to rootProject.name that can only be set in this file) https://discuss.gradle.org/t/rootproject-name-in-settings-gradle-vs-projectname-in-build-gradle/5704

//this whole machinery (plus a change in app/build.gradle) is used to auto generate rn-community module names so that they can, indirectly be included in to app/build.gradle so that those modules can be used

apply from:file("${rootDir}/../../rn.common/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli-platform-android/native_modules.gradle"); applyNativeModulesSettingsGradle(settings,"../../rn.common/") //note second arg, this is a must because I do not have a default location of node_modules (see custom root section at: https://github.com/react-native-community/cli/blob/master/docs/autolinking.md )

include ':app', ':lint'
include ':react-native-vector-icons'

project(':react-native-vector-icons').projectDir = file("${rootDir}/../../../mob/rn.common/node_modules/react-native-vector-icons/android")

I did not even have, initially, the react-native.config.js (because it was not noted as needed in rn-diff utility) , but even after adding it – it did not help.

appreciate in advance any guidance.