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December 5th, 2025

The Android Build That Refused to Build Today was supposed to be the day I finally got the Android build working. Six hours later, I’m writing this with zero successful builds and a very clear understanding of why. Let me walk you through the entire disaster.

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6:00 PM — Starting Fresh

I was already frustrated with the old environment. Nothing was working properly, so I decided to nuke everything and start clean. Deleted folders. Reset native code. Reinstalled dependencies. The classic “maybe if I start fresh it’ll magically work” approach. Spoiler: it did not magically work.

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6:10 PM — Setting Up WSL

Opened Ubuntu on WSL. First task: get my Android phone detected.
Nothing. Empty list. Great start. So I went through the whole ritual:
  • Installed ADB
  • Enabled USB debugging on phone
  • Added USB rules
  • Restarted the adb server
Eventually the device showed up. Small win. At least something was working.

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6:40 PM — Preparing to Build

Navigated to the project folder:
Ran the build command:
And so began the long chain of build processes that would consume my entire evening.

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6:50 PM — Gradle Download Starts

Gradle started downloading:
This took forever. The download crawled. Sometimes it just sat there doing nothing. After about 20 minutes, it finally finished and the actual Android build started. I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong.

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7:15 PM — Break

Took a break. Came back later with the intention of finishing everything tonight. Famous last words.

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8:00 PM — Build Attempt 1

Restarted the command:
Gradle started building from scratch. Progress bar moved: 30%… 40%… 60%… 80%… Then the warnings started appearing:
This happened over and over. CMake tasks. NDK-related stuff. All complaining about hard links. I ignored it. Surely it would still work, right?

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8:40 PM — Stuck at 83%

The build hit 83% and just… stopped. Slowly crawled to 90%. Terminal kept showing:
Gradle was not progressing. I sat there for 15-20 minutes watching nothing happen. This is the developer equivalent of watching paint dry, except the paint is also on fire.

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9:20 PM — No Movement

Still stuck:
By now it was obvious something in the native build was blocked. Those hard-link warnings weren’t just warnings — they were the problem. Working inside /mnt/c on WSL means Windows filesystem. Windows filesystem doesn’t properly support hard links. Every hard link operation was falling back to slow copies.

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9:45 PM — Restarting the Attempt

Killed the stuck process. Restarted Ubuntu. Tried everything again:
  • Verified adb devices
  • Reconnected phone
  • Checked debugging was on
Everything looked fine. The problem wasn’t the device.

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10:00 PM — Build Attempt 2

Ran it again:
Same slow process. Same warnings:
This confirmed it. WSL + Windows filesystem was the root problem. Not my code. Not Expo. Not my phone. The environment itself was broken for this use case.

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10:30 PM — BIOS Accident

While switching between screens, I accidentally entered BIOS. Panicked for a second. Exited safely. Continued. Just another thing to add to the chaos of this evening.

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11:00 PM — Stuck Again

Build reached the exact same state:
Frozen. Repeated “IDLE” messages. This proved the issue was consistent. Not random. Not a fluke. The same thing happened every single time at the same point.

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11:30 PM — Realization

I started questioning everything. Every step felt like it was working against me. The setup inside /mnt/c was never going to allow this build to complete. The filesystem limitations were fundamental, not fixable with workarounds. Six hours in, and I was no closer to a working build than when I started.

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12:00 AM — The Final Failure

Gradle finally gave up:
The daemon timed out and crashed. Final confirmation that this environment is not stable enough for Android native builds. I just stared at the screen. Six hours. Nothing to show for it.

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Root Cause

Here’s what actually went wrong:
  1. Project was inside /mnt/c on WSL
  2. Android NDK requires hard links
  3. Hard links don’t work properly on /mnt/c (Windows filesystem)
  4. WSL converts hard links into slow fallback copies
  5. Native builds take forever and freeze around 90%
  6. Gradle daemon eventually times out and crashes
Nothing was wrong with my code. Nothing was wrong with Expo. Nothing was wrong with my device. The environment setup was the only thing blocking the build.

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12:30 AM — End of Day

After more than six hours of trying, deleting, reinstalling, debugging, reconnecting devices, analyzing logs, and sitting through multiple freezes — the build did not complete. But now I finally know exactly why. Tomorrow’s plan: move the project to the native Linux filesystem inside WSL, not /mnt/c. That should fix everything. Today was painful. But at least it wasn’t wasted. I learned something. That’s the whole point of building in public. Even the failures get documented. See you tomorrow.