Feature request: Compatibility with Google Play services 9.x.x

Do not force consumers to use latest Play services library.

Since this project started at 9.0.0 let’s assume that this is the actual minimum.

Same goes for support library. Google play services need at least 24.0.0 so that should be minimum.

Dependencies on Facebook and Twitter SDK should be provided instead of compile (if applicable).

[consp1racy]

why you are hesitant to upgrade to the latest play services libraries?

@samtstern I come from old school (i.e. market) where people are reluctant to update apps (incl. Google Play services) or have disabled automatic updates. It used to be about lack of space, now it’s about conserving data.

Unless it’s absolutely necessary we don’t want to bother users with updating an external app (GMS), even more so when the core app does not leverage any new features of 10.0.x (but can still leverage security fixes if a newer version is installed on the device, right?).

we’d like to encourage developers to use the latest when possible.

Encourage - yes. Force - no.

[samtstern]

I am going through old issues and I am going to close this one. Although I totally understand the benefit the opposite request is much more common: users want to use a newer version of play services with an older version of FirebaseUI. In general it’s much more aligned with the goals of this library to depend on the latest library version which has all new features, bugfixes, etc.

We do plan to move over to the new gradle implementation designation soon, which may help here.

Thank you @consp1racy for filing originally, it inspired some good conversations.