This doesn't really surprise me. The Java toolchain has always been a bit painful to me, although I come from the world of .NET where we were able to learn from

This doesn't really surprise me. The Java toolchain has always been a bit painful to me, although I come from the world of .NET where we were able to learn from Java's early mistakes and settled on a fairly simple toolchain. But even in our world we still have some level of package hell, typically in the form of version redirects. Anywho, back to the case of Android, it seems as though nobody ever thought about what it would be like to rapidly iterate the way google does on a toolchain that tends towards liking things to stay in place.