RN-0.73 change Android configs for RN 0.73 compatibility

[FelipeSSantos1]

React Native SDK

What did you accomplish?

React Native 0.73 will depend on Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) 8.x. This will require all the libraries to specify a namespace in their build.gradle file.

Details
I'd like to share some of the upcoming changes that will happen in 0.73, which is still a bit far, but we'd rather start earlier rather than later.

React Native 0.73 will depend on Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) 8.x, which brings a lot of improvements for Android apps but also a series of notable changes.

Most importantly:

App/Library Developers will now have to install and use Java 17
Library Developers will have to specify a namespace in their build.gradle file.
Specifically, the last change is a breaking change and will make libraries that are not specifying a namespace incompatible with React Native 0.73 (your project won't build).

Support for namespace was added in AGP 7.3.x, which ships with React Native 0.71. Libraries that published a new version with a namespace declared for 0.71 or 0.72 don't need further update. So we invite library authors to do those changes as soon as possible so by the time 0.73 is out, most of the apps are adapted.

What you need to change
Library authors will have to update their android/build.gradle file as follows:

android {
+   namespace = "io.split.rnsplit"
    ...
}

and remove the package definition from their AndroidManifest.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
-          package="io.split.rnsplit">
+          >
...
</manifest>

Further reading
Official Google documentation on namespaces is here.

How do we test the changes introduced in this PR?

Extra Notes

[FelipeSSantos1]

to keep the previous compatibility I added back the namespace on AndroidManifest.
react-native-community/discussions-and-proposals#671 (comment)

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[EmilianoSanchez]

Thank you @felipemillhouse so much for the contribution, detailed explanation, and references.

We will include your suggestion to ship soon with the next release.