foojay-resolver-convention 0.5.0 in gradle-plugin is incompatible with Gradle 9.0.0

Start with settings.gradle.kts in @react-native/gradle-plugin and gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties to confirm the Gradle and foojay versions. Reproduce with the Expo Android commands after clearing Gradle caches, then verify a fresh project builds with Gradle 9.0.0 and the updated resolver configuration; also check the reported --no-configure-on-demand requirement.

Description

The @react-native/gradle-plugin bundles settings.gradle.kts with:

plugins { id("org.gradle.toolchains.foojay-resolver-convention").version("0.5.0") }

React Native 0.83.x uses Gradle 9.0.0 (set in gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties), but foojay-resolver-convention 0.5.0 depends on FoojayToolchainsPlugin, a class that was removed in Gradle 9.0.0.

This causes a build failure on any fresh project or after clearing Gradle caches.

Steps to reproduce

npx create-expo-app@latest --template default@sdk-55
cd <project>
rm -rf ~/.gradle/caches
npx expo run:android

Error

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Settings file 'android/settings.gradle' line: 21

* What went wrong:
Error resolving plugin [id: 'com.facebook.react.settings']
> org/gradle/toolchains/foojay/FoojayToolchainsPlugin

Full stacktrace:

Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/gradle/toolchains/foojay/FoojayToolchainsPlugin
    at org.gradle.toolchains.foojay.FoojayToolchainsConventionPlugin.apply(FoojayToolchainsConventionPlugin.kt:11)

Root cause

Component	Version
react-native	0.83.4
@react-native/gradle-plugin	0.83.4
Gradle	9.0.0
foojay-resolver-convention	0.5.0

Gradle 9.0.0 removed the FoojayToolchainsPlugin class that foojay 0.5.0 depends on. Versions 0.8.0+ of foojay-resolver-convention are compatible with Gradle 9.0.0.

Verified fix

Updating settings.gradle.kts in @react-native/gradle-plugin from:

plugins { id("org.gradle.toolchains.foojay-resolver-convention").version("0.5.0") }

to:

plugins { id("org.gradle.toolchains.foojay-resolver-convention").version("0.9.0") }

resolves the issue. The build also requires --no-configure-on-demand to avoid a related metadata.bin generation failure.

Affected versions

• react-native 0.83.0 through 0.84.1 (all ship foojay 0.5.0 with Gradle 9.0.0)
• Expo SDK 55 (uses react-native 0.83.x)
• Reproducible on macOS (ARM64) with Java 17 and Node 24

Environment

System: macOS 26.3.1 (arm64)
Node: v24.14.0
Java: OpenJDK 17.0.18 (Zulu)
Gradle: 9.0.0
react-native: 0.83.4
Expo SDK: 55.0.9