android - Installation error: INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES

Question

At the risk of repeating what appears to be a very common complaint, I think I have a substantial variation on this bug.

The application won't install from Eclipse and this appears in the console: Installation error: INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES.

LogCat provides some illumination: Package com.xxx has no certificates at entry assets/fonts/helvetica_neue.ttf; ignoring!

Meaning that the device (or emulator) believes that this particular file wasn't signed.

The usual solutions proposed for this are:
- Rename the offending file. We've tried that, it then complains about the next file, then the next, and so on.
- Add a dummy file. Tried that too. It complains about the new file, regardless of what it's called.
- Compile for greater than Android 1.6. We're compiling for 2.3.

It's worth noting this only happens when we launch a unit test. We can install the "real" application on its own with no difficulties. We're also using Maven and, of course, the Maven Android plugin.

Any insights or suggestions would be very welcome and of course if we figure it out on our own I'll post any findings.

Answer 1

I encountered this through normal debugging - while it's unlikely to help all the time, simply going to Project -> Clean and rebuilding everything may be enough to clear the error.