title: Android studio- adding signing configurations to gradle
body: <p>I am very new to the android world and I was trying to just get to run a simple hello world app on my phone.
  when I tried this I learnt that the APK generated by an android studio is an unsigned one. So to sign this I have gone through the process of creating a Key store and then a private Key, its alias and I was successful in signing the APK and installing on my phone and running it too.</p>
  
  <p>Then I went through <a href="https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/app-signing.html" rel="noreferrer">this link</a> for adding signing configurations to the gradle to automatically sign the release with the newly created key store file.
  I have followed the steps n the above link properly and did not miss anything but still when I finish my signing configurations I have an error saying </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Gradle project sync failed.Basic functionality(eg. editing, debugging)
    will not work properly.</p>
    
    <p>Error:(19, 0) Could not find property 'config' on SigningConfig
    container.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I was taken by a surprise! and now I am not able to sign my APKs manually too. 
  Now when I try to sign manually, it says the gradle is <strong>not in sync</strong> </p>
  
  <p>I guess this file will be of help to help me solve this error. build.gradle of the project. I am trying to understand is what is mentioned here is same as the one I configured through the Android Studio UI while making the signing configurations.</p>
  
  <pre><code>apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
  
  android {
      signingConfigs {
          release {
              storeFile file("&lt;path&gt;\\firstKeystore.jks")
              storePassword "******"
              keyAlias "usual password"
              keyPassword "******"
          }
      }
      compileSdkVersion 19
      buildToolsVersion '20.0.0'
      defaultConfig {
          applicationId 'com.tech.vasanth.newsfeed'
          minSdkVersion 19
          targetSdkVersion 19
          versionCode 1
          versionName '1.0'
      }
      buildTypes {
          release {
              runProguard false
              proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
              signingConfig signingConfigs.config
              debuggable false
              jniDebugBuild false
              renderscriptDebugBuild false
              zipAlign true
          }
          debug {
              signingConfig signingConfigs.config
          }
      }
      productFlavors {
      }
  }
  
  dependencies {
      compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
  }
  </code></pre>