Error when adding buildFeatures in build.gradle file

I caught this error when I tried to add Jetpack to my existing app. I followed Suraj's answer, even used the newest Kotlin gradle plugin, and couldn't exactly figure out what was wrong. I also followed the official setup guide and it didn't work. Everything seemed okay, but nothing helped.

Installing Android Studio 4.0 canary didn't help either.

Turns out, it's not enough to just include certain dependencies – you need specific versions or higher. I was using an older Android Gradle plugin: 3.5.3. Upgrading to 4.0.0-alpha07 fixed the error:

classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.0-alpha07'

Make sure to check your dependencies if you're adding Jetpack to an existing app

For build.gradle.kts I wasn't able to add it with

android {
    buildFeatures {
        dataBinding = true
        viewBinding = true
    }
}

What worked was this:

android {
    buildFeatures.dataBinding = true
    buildFeatures.viewBinding = true
}

To add jetpack compose to your project, you need to follow below steps:

Note: You should be on 4.1 Canary build of Android Studio

Step 1 : Inside the build.gradle file

android {
    defaultConfig {
        ...
        minSdkVersion 21
    }

    buildFeatures {
        // Enables Jetpack Compose for this module
        compose true
    }
    ...

    // Set both the Java and Kotlin compilers to target Java 8.

    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }

    kotlinOptions {
        jvmTarget = "1.8"
    }
}

Note: Jetpack Compose currently requires an experimental version of the Kotlin-Gradle plugin. To include this plugin in your app, include the following in your project’s build.gradle file

buildscript {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
        // To download the required version of the Kotlin-Gradle plugin,
        // add the following repository.
        maven { url 'https://dl.bintray.com/kotlin/kotlin-eap' }
    ...
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.0-alpha01'
        classpath 'org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:1.3.60-eap-25'
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
        maven { url 'https://dl.bintray.com/kotlin/kotlin-eap' }
    }
}

Step 2: Add Jetpack Compose toolkit dependencies in your build.gradle file

dependencies {
    // You also need to include the following Compose toolkit dependencies.
    implementation 'androidx.ui:ui-tooling:0.1.0-dev02'
    implementation 'androidx.ui:ui-layout:0.1.0-dev02'
    implementation 'androidx.ui:ui-material:0.1.0-dev02'
    ...
}

It seems that this

buildFeatures {
    viewBinding true
}

Is replaced with

viewBinding {
    enabled true
}

Reference