Unable to instantiate application android.support.multidex.MultiDexApplication: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: on path: DexPathList

Question

how are you ?. i've searched this question carefully but there seems no complete answer as to why and how to solve this issue.

okay, at first i am running Android Studio 1.5.1 with completely out dated gradle and sdk version but at that time i felt enough to use those old versions but now i updated all of those to android 2.3.1 latest SDK and latest Gradle.

as you may already know if i run directly from Android Studio it works fine, but when i copy my app_debug.apk file it suddenly showing the error

 Unable to instantiate application android.support.multidex.MultiDexApplication: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Didn't find class "android.support.multidex.MultiDexApplication" on path: DexPathList[[zip file "/data/app/com.asd.asd.asd1/base.apk"],nativeLibraryDirectories=[/vendor/lib, /system/lib]]

i've applied many solution to this particular error, one which being successful was changin my gradel version in modul:app gradle from

classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.3.1'

to

classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.2.3'

but then i tried all other app that i've made before and applying the same method. strangely, it didn't work.

and i think there is something that i am missing here but i dont know what, i dont want to enable multiDexEnabled because i dont think that's a good way to solve this problem.

thanks.

Answer 1

what you have to do is enable Multidex in gradle

defaultConfig{
     multiDexEnabled true
}

else you need to minimize the use of heavy dependencies. if you insist to use those dependencies, you need to exclude module android support module in those dependencies..

for example, i already have appcompat-v7 in my list. so exclude module appcompat-v7 from third party library.

compile ('uk.co.chrisjenx:calligraphy:2.2.0'){
        exclude group: 'com.android.support', module: 'appcompat-v7'
        transitive = false
}