What's the difference between "minifyEnabled" and "useProguard" in the Android Plugin for Gradle?
AndroidGradleAndroid Gradle-Pluginbuild.gradleAndroid ProguardAndroid Problem Overview
I see that the Android Plugin for Gradle has a minifyEnabled
property as well as a useProguard
property, as follows:
android {
buildTypes {
debug {
minifyEnabled true
useProguard false
}
release {
minifyEnabled true
useProguard true
}
}
}
What's the difference between these two properties? Or, rather, what's the meaning of each?
Android Solutions
Solution 1 - Android
Quoting from tools.android.com:
> Built-in shrinker > > Version 2.0 of Android Plugin for Gradle ships with an experimental > built-in code shrinker, which can be used instead of ProGuard. The > built-in shrinker supports fast incremental runs and is meant to speed > up iteration cycles. It can be enabled using the following code > snippet: > > android { > buildTypes { > debug { > minifyEnabled true > useProguard false > proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt') > } > } > } > > The built-in shrinker can only remove dead code, it does not obfuscate or optimize. It can be configured using the same files as > ProGuard, but will ignore all flags related to obfuscation or > optimization. > > Unlike ProGuard, we support using the built-in shrinker together with > Instant Run: depending on the project, it may significantly decrease > the initial build and install time. Any methods that become reachable > after a code change will appear as newly added to the program and > prevent an Instant Run hotswap.
Solution 2 - Android
You don't need useProguard true
anymore.
Code shrinking with R8 is enabled by default when you set the minifyEnabled
property to true.
When you build your project using Android Gradle plugin 3.4.0 or higher, the plugin no longer uses ProGuard to perform compile-time code optimization. Instead, the plugin works with the R8 compiler to handle the tasks according to the official document.
If you want to use ProGuard instead of R8. Add this line in the gradle.properties file
android.enableR8=false
Solution 3 - Android
I set minifyEnabled true
for my release buildType and it removed an entire enum which it thougt to be unused code i guess. This made my app crash due to a NoSuchFieldException
. Took me 4 hours to find the reason for this crash. 0/10 can not recommend minifyEnabled.
Solution 4 - Android
Just enable minifyEnabled
will have code both optimized and obfuscated.
This is because useProguard true
is default so no need to set it explicitly.
See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17290023/obfuscation-in-android-studio