Upgrading to Google Play Services 7.0.0 Broke GCM

Problem

After upgrading from Google play services 6.5.87 to 7.0.0 I got compile errors in sections of code I hadn't touched.

Symptoms

I got errors similar to these:

• error: package com.google.android.gms.gcm does not exist
  import com.google.android.gms.gcm.GoogleCloudMessaging;
• error: package GoogleCloudMessaging does not exist
  if (GoogleCloudMessaging.MESSAGE_TYPE_MESSAGE.equals(messageType)) {
• error: cannot find symbol
  GoogleCloudMessaging gcm = GoogleCloudMessaging.getInstance(this);

Solution

Simply put: add the GCM API to your gradle file:

Due to Dex limit issues, I stopped importing the full/bulky GooglePlayServices dependency the moment Google made that an option. Instead, I selectively compile the APIs that we need. It seems that version 7.0.0 of Google Play Services is a bit more modular than the previous one and more APIs have have been split out into individual packages.

So to fix this problem, all I had to do was add the new GCM api to my gradle build file. Compile errors went away and both the command-line and IDE builds were happy again!

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-gcm:7.0.0'

As an added bonus, the "location" APIs have also been split out. After adding that, I was finally able to get rid of the play-services-base dependency that I previously relied on for the GCM & location packages.