Michael Nairn The release is configured the way it is configured because that is how release configurations are configured in Android. If we want to zipalign and sign the apk ourselves we can, but then we can't make use of the gradle tooling for it.

The best way to get it buildable for release and debug is like passos said, we need to make sure that the build environment has the right variables set up so the keys and their passcodes can be loaded.