如何使用“minifyEnabled true”调试应用程序并在发布模式下禁用MultiDexApplication

Question

When build.gradle has lines:

buildTypes {
    debug{
        minifyEnabled true
    }

we cannot debug an application. A solution is to write:

    ...
    multiDexEnabled true
}
buildTypes {
    debug{
        minifyEnabled false
        debuggable true
    }

...
implementation 'com.android.support:multidex:1.0.3'

And in MyApplication file write:

public class MyApplication extends MultiDexApplication

But when we turn to release mode the application still inherits from MultiDexApplication . So there can be some compatibility problems with old devices. Is there a way, for instance, in Gradle, to avoid MultiDexApplication in release mode and retain it only in debug mode? I read https://xrubio.com/2016/10/disabling-removing-code-on-release-builds/ but unsure if it can help.

Answer 1

One option would be to use build variants . Basically, this lets you specify code that is only included in either the debug or release versions of your app. You do this by putting the code you only want in one version in src/debug or src/release instead of src/main . Exactly what code goes where is up to you. You have a couple of options here.

1. You could have two copies of MyApplication , one extending MultiDexApplication in src/debug and the other extending the base Application class in src/release . This way, the multi-dex code is only included in the debug build, not the release build. You still specify your application class in src/main/AndroidManifest.xml . This option is best if you don't have anything else in your Application class.

2. If your application class has significant code in it beyond multi-dex, it may be easier to have a base abstract class that contains everything else, and extend it in src/debug and src/main , adding the following to your debug version (as described here ):

public class MyApplication extends BaseApplication {
  @Override
  protected void attachBaseContext(Context base) {
     super.attachBaseContext(base);
     MultiDex.install(this);
  }
}

3. The third option is to actually declare different Application classes in debug vs. release. This can be done by having that declaration in src/debug/AndroidManifest.xml and the release equivalent. Then, you can do whatever you want, including not declaring an application class in one version. This works well if you have several different parts in your class that are different between release and debug, or don't need an application class in one of them.