Okay. I tried a bunch of agp+android studio versions

The last working version was classpath("com.android.tools.build:gradle:7.4.0-alpha06")

once I moved to

classpath("com.android.tools.build:gradle:7.4.0-alpha07") then things start breaking on firebase app dist.

Scott, assigning to you as it seem to complain the zip is not aligned while packaging which is very puzzling considering the steps...

OP, when you build the APK with AGP, are you doing any post-processing on the APK and/or do you have any custom tasks that are modifying the APK?

Can you try to verify the alignment of your APK with zipalign locally (zipalign is included in build-tools):

zipalign -c -v 4 foo.apk

Not doing any post processing. No custom tasks. I will try to verify alignment now. Give me a sec.

Scenario 1:

built my apk with agp alpha09, but didn't update firebase (bom = 30.2.0)
/Users/idle/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/31.0.0/zipalign -c -v 4 app-release.apk

"Verification succesful"

Scenario 2:

built my apk with agp alpha09, but I DID update firebase (bom = 30.3.1)
/Users/idle/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/31.0.0/zipalign -c -v 4 app-release.apk

"Verification FAILED"

Scenario 3:

built my apk with agp alpha09, with androidx.splash rc01
/Users/idle/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/31.0.0/zipalign -c -v 4 app-release.apk

"Verification succesful"

Scenario 4:

built my apk with agp alpha09, with androidx.splash 1.0.0
/Users/idle/Library/Android/sdk/build-tools/31.0.0/zipalign -c -v 4 app-release.apk

"Verification FAILED"

In both failed cases if I do | grep BAD I get

 7216334 junit/runner/logo.gif (BAD - 2)
 7217354 junit/runner/smalllogo.gif (BAD - 2)

In the cases where zipalign verification fails, is the APK generated by a clean build (e.g., ./gradlew clean :app:assembleRelease)?

Does verification succeed if you add this to your build.gradle?

android {
    packagingOptions {
        exclude 'junit/runner/logo.gif'
        exclude 'junit/runner/smalllogo.gif'
    }
}

In the cases where zipalign verification fails, is the APK generated by a clean build (e.g., ./gradlew clean :app:assembleRelease)?

I clean before i generate the apk using the Android Studio menu for generating an apk

Does verification succeed if you add this to your build.gradle?

I assume it will, but let me try. Any reason why changing from androidx.splash 1.0.0-rc01 to 1.0.0 stable (which is 0 changes. all it changed was the dependency version) that it fails verification. It seems like something else is wrong that's a bit deeper than just adding these two exclude statements.