Android build fails with cannot find symbol ReplayIntegration when sentry-android-replay is excluded #6802

What React Native libraries do you use?

React Native without Frameworks

Are you using sentry.io or on-premise?

sentry.io (SaS)

Are you using any other error monitoring solution alongside Sentry?

No

Other Error Monitoring Solution Name

No response

@sentry/react-native SDK Version

8.20.0 (bundles io.sentry:sentry-android:8.49.0). Still present on 8.28.0 (8.58.0).

How does your development environment look like?

Not environment specific. This is a compile error in the SDK's Android sources, independent of the React Native version or tooling.

Sentry.init()

// Not relevant, the failure happens at compile time.
// Session Replay is not configured.
Sentry.init({
  dsn: 'https://...@sentry.io/...',
});

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install @sentry/react-native@8.20.0 in a React Native app.
2. Exclude the replay module as documented in Excluding Session Replay from Android and fix(replay): Allow excluding the sentry-android-replay module from android targets #5174, in the root android/build.gradle:

   subprojects {
     configurations.all {
       exclude group: 'io.sentry', module: 'sentry-android-replay'
     }
   }

3. Build Android, for example cd android && ./gradlew assembleDebug.

Expected Result

The @sentry/react-native Android library compiles without sentry-android-replay on the classpath, as it did after #5174 (released in 7.1.0).

Actual Result

compileDebugJavaWithJavac fails for the @sentry/react-native module:

error: cannot find symbol
  symbol:   class ReplayIntegration
  location: package io.sentry.android.replay
/node_modules/@sentry/react-native/android/src/main/java/io/sentry/react/replay/RNSentryReplayFragmentLifecycleTracer.java:23: error: cannot find symbol
  private @Nullable ReplayIntegration replayIntegration;

Root cause:

• RNSentryReplayFragmentLifecycleTracer was added in fix(session-replay): Fixes orientation change misalignment for session replay on Android #5321 (7.5.0). It imports io.sentry.android.replay.ReplayIntegration directly.
• packages/core/android/libs/replay-stubs.jar only stubs DefaultReplayBreadcrumbConverter, so compilation fails once the real module is excluded.
• Since feat: v8: Capture app start errors before JS #5582 (8.0.0), nothing in the SDK instantiates the tracer any more. It is only referenced by RNSentryReplayFragmentLifecycleTracerTest.kt.

Workaround: delete RNSentryReplayFragmentLifecycleTracer.java from node_modules/@sentry/react-native/android/src/main/java/io/sentry/react/replay/ using patch-package or yarn patch.