Renaming the package of a generated app is difficult

[marcprux]

If you want to change the package name of a Skip app from "hello.skip" to "hello.skipxyz", you need to perform the following 4 steps (see attached screenshot):

1. Edit Skip.env with the change: ANDROID_PACKAGE_NAME = hello.skipxyz
2. Edit Sources/HelloSkip/Skip/skip.yml and add the line under build:/contents:: - 'group = "hello.skipxyz"'
3. Edit Android/app/build.gradle.kts and add the line in the android block: group = "hello.skipxyz"
4. Edit Android/src/main/kotlin/hello/skip/Main.kt and update package hello.skipxyz, as well as importing the (auto-named and unchangeable) app module name: import hello.skip.*

Failure to do all of these will typically result in either a build error like:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Could not determine the dependencies of task ':app:compileDebugJavaWithJavac'.
> Could not resolve all dependencies for configuration ':app:debugCompileClasspath'.
   > Could not find hello.skip:HelloSkip:.
     Required by:
         project :app

or a crash on launch like:

01-25 11:31:31.511 27349 27349 E AndroidRuntime: Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Didn't find class "hello.skipxyz.AndroidAppMain" on path: DexPathList[[zip file "/data/app/~~fw-W-ujTxVW3iNG3EXBXeA==/skip.hello.App-Z2ec3q7jlZqMiDzywvUcuw==/base.apk"],nativeLibraryDirectories=[/data/app/~~fw-W-ujTxVW3iNG3EXBXeA==/skip.hello.App-Z2ec3q7jlZqMiDzywvUcuw==/lib/arm64, /data/app/~~fw-W-ujTxVW3iNG3EXBXeA==/skip.hello.App-Z2ec3q7jlZqMiDzywvUcuw==/base.apk!/lib/arm64-v8a, /system/lib64, /system_ext/lib64]]
01-25 11:31:31.511 27349 27349 E AndroidRuntime: 	at dalvik.system.BaseDexClassLoader.findClass(BaseDexClassLoader.java:259)
01-25 11:31:31.511 27349 27349 E AndroidRuntime: 	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:379)

[dfabulich]

as well as importing the (auto-named and unchangeable) app module name: import hello.skip.*

What is this autogenerated based on? (Why isn't it changeable? How is it even possible to have an unchangeable setting??)

[marcprux]

What is this autogenerated based on?

The lower-cased and de-camel-cased module name. E.g., FooBar becomes foo.bar, and SomeBIGThing becomes some.big.thing.

(Why isn't it changeable? How is it even possible to have an unchangeable setting??)

We've always thought that derived package name customization would be a useful feature, but (to my surprise) no-one has ever requested it, and so we never bothered implementing it.