bazelbuild/bazel · error · ManifestError

No <instrumentation> tag containing the targetPackage attrib

Error message

No <instrumentation> tag containing the targetPackage attribute is found in the manifest at %s

What it means

Thrown by tools/android/instrumentation_test_check.py while validating an instrumentation test manifest. It searches for <instrumentation> elements carrying the Android-namespaced targetPackage attribute; if none is found, ManifestError is raised with the manifest path.

Source

Thrown at tools/android/instrumentation_test_check.py:57

# There might be more than one <instrumentation> tag to use different
# test runners, so we need to extract the targetPackage attribute values
# from all of them and check that they are the same.
def _ExtractTargetPackageToInstrument(xml_content, path):
  """Extract the targetPackage value from the <instrumentation> tag."""

  # https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/manifest-element.html
  # xmlns:android is the required namespace in an Android manifest.
  tree = ET.ElementTree(ET.fromstring(xml_content))
  package_key = "{http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android}targetPackage"
  instrumentation_elems = tree.iterfind(
      ".//instrumentation[@{0}]".format(package_key))

  package_names = set(e.attrib[package_key] for e in instrumentation_elems)

  if not package_names:
    raise ManifestError("No <instrumentation> tag containing "
                        "the targetPackage attribute is found in the "
                        "manifest at %s" % path)

  if len(package_names) > 1:
    raise ManifestError(
        "The <instrumentation> tags in the manifest at %s do not "
        "reference the same target package: %s" % (path, list(package_names)))

  return package_names.pop()


def _ExtractTargetPackageName(xml_content, path):
  """Extract the package name value from the root <manifest> tag."""
  tree = ET.ElementTree(ET.fromstring(xml_content))
  root = tree.getroot()
  if "package" in root.attrib:
    return root.attrib["package"]
  else:

View on GitHub (pinned to e6e199d060)

Solutions

1. Add <instrumentation android:name="..." android:targetPackage="<target app package>" /> inside <manifest>.
2. Verify the attribute uses the android: namespace prefix and that xmlns:android is declared on the root.
3. Check that the manifest passed via --instrumentation_manifest is the test manifest, not the app manifest.

Example fix

<!-- before -->
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <instrumentation android:name="android.test.InstrumentationTestRunner" />
</manifest>

<!-- after -->
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <instrumentation android:name="android.test.InstrumentationTestRunner"
      android:targetPackage="com.example.app" />
</manifest>

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

def has_instrumentation_target_package(xml_content):
    tree = ET.ElementTree(ET.fromstring(xml_content))
    key = '{http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android}targetPackage'
    return len(list(tree.iterfind('.//instrumentation[@%s]' % key))) > 0

When it happens

Trigger: The instrumentation manifest XML parsed by _ExtractTargetPackageToInstrument contains no <instrumentation> tag, or the tag exists but omits android:targetPackage (e.g. only android:name is set).

Common situations: Hand-written test manifest missing the instrumentation block; targetPackage written without the android: namespace so ElementTree does not match '{http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android}targetPackage'; manifest trimmed during a refactor.

Related errors

• The <instrumentation> tags in the manifest at %s do not refe
• The <manifest> tag in the manifest at %s needs to specify th
• The targetPackage specified in the instrumentation manifest
• Runfiles failed to resolve {path}
• Proguard failed ({p.returncode})

AI-assisted analysis of bazelbuild/bazel@e6e199d060 (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8b7d8ad52cbe0576. Report an issue: GitHub.