Failed to generate apk from Android studio 3.1.1

Question

When I try to generate a signed APK, I found this issue :

10:58 Generate Signed APK: Errors while building APK. You can find the errors in the 'Messages' view. No cached version of com.android.tools.lint:lint-gradle:26.1.1 available for offline mode.

this is my android studio details :

Android Studio 3.1.1
Build #AI-173.4697961, built on April 4, 2018
JRE: 1.8.0_152-release-1024-b02 amd64
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o
Windows 10 10.0

this block for signing the apk :

  buildTypes {
    release {
        minifyEnabled false
        proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        signingConfig signingConfigs.releaseconfig
    }
    debug {

        minifyEnabled false
        proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'),
                'proguard-rules.pro'
    }

}  signingConfigs {
    releaseconfig {
        keyAlias 'release_key'
        keyPassword 'xxxxx'
        storeFile file('xxxxxx)
        storePassword 'xxxx'
    }
}

Answer 1

Solved (works for me) changing gradle version in the project build.gradle:

From this

classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.1.1'

to this

classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.0.1'

Answer 2

Per the Android Studio docs, your top-level build.gradle ought to have the google() repository added. Be sure to add it to the repositories under buildscript AND allprojects.

The latter one is what I missed the first time I edited this today after upgrading and that led directly to a Could not find com.android.tools.lint:lint-gradle:26.1.1. when I tried to build a release APK.