cordova-simulate | Simulates your Apache Cordova application in the browser | Mobile Application library

I am updating the dojo libraries in a Cordova mobile app. Everything works correctly when running the updated application in the browser (using Cordova-simulate). When running my application in an emulator or on the device, I get an error like:

Unable to open asset URL: file:///android_asset/www/scripts/lib/3.32/dojo/_base/Url.js```

When I examine my .apk file, the error makes sense, because the _base and _firebug folders have not been copied into the apk.

The _base and_firebug folders are properly copied to the platforms folder during the application build process, but are not being included into the final APK. As near as I can tell, the problem is these folder names begin with an underscore character.

I renamed _base and _firebug, to base and firebug. AFter building again, I was able to confirm that they were included in the APK. This seems to confirm that the underscore is what is preventing the directories from being included.

I found this 2014 post dojo/_base/*js missing from worklight apk in wl 6.1 which is the same basic issue. And I tried the suggested fix, but Android rejected my apk at install time with the error below. The post is 6 years old, so obviously something has changed, or I'm doing something completely wrong. Probably both.

adb: failed to install app-debug.apk: Failure [INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES: Failed to collect certificates from /data/app/vmdl633061898.tmp/base.apk: META-INF/CERT.SF indicates /data/app/vmdl633061898.tmp/base.apk is signed using APK Signature Scheme v2, but no such signature was found. Signature stripped?]

Ideally, I would like to specify some command line option (or build-extras.gradle option, or whatever) to force the build process to include the _base and _firebug folders.

Alternately, if someone has a link to clear instructions on how to unzip, modify, rezip, sign and align my APK, that would be super helpful also.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.