Issues in release build when minifyEnabled is set to true

[ArmorDarks]

Capacitor version

1.0.0-beta.4

Platform

Android

Issue

Strangely, many Capacitor elements behave differently in release build.

For instance, with debug we don't have any issues, while release builds getting few crashes during testing all the time:

For instance, my friend's Galaxy S6 Android 6.0 (debloated, not stock) always crashing on launch with release version, but not with debug.

Another issue with navigator.geolocation described in #738

And we noticed that for some reason Plugins.App.openUrl stops to work in release version. It just doing nothing.

I'm sure there also other issues specific to the release build. It makes me feel there some kind of global issue with release build in Capacitor.

What can I do to help debug those issues?

[solojuve1897]

@ArmorDarks

"And we noticed that for some reason Plugins.App.openUrl stops to work in release version. It just doing nothing."

Interesting since I have an issue opened regarding openUrl.
#674

[ArmorDarks]

@solojuve1897 did you try it with debug or release build? Our issue happens only with release

[solojuve1897]

In release also

[ArmorDarks]

Turned out that issues disappear if set in build.gradle minify to false.

I can only wonder why minification of the APK results in such issues.

[jcesarmobile]

Are you talking about minifyEnabled? or just minify?
Default value for minifyEnabled in the template is false (https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor/blob/master/android-template/app/build.gradle#L15)
Cordova has always had problems with minification/proguard, but not really sure why. But I don't think this is related to the Cordova compat as your problem was with Capacitor Plugins, not with Cordova ones.

[ArmorDarks]

Yes, I meant minifyEnabled, sorry for the confusion.

We've set it to true because it was logical to do so, it just wasn't clear that it will lead to such issues.

But I don't think this is related to the Cordova compat as your problem was with Capacitor Plugins, not with Cordova ones.

yeap, we do not use any Cordova plugins. Only pure Capacitor, without any additions

[jcesarmobile]

It's probably related to minifyEnabled enabling proguard, which obfuscates the code and that can make the plugin execution code not work.
We can test this also setting minifyEnabled to true in debug mode too and then configure proguard to not obfuscate the classes related to plugin execution.

[nadhir-falta]

First, thank you Capacitor team for the amazing work you guys do!!
Secondly, I faced this issue last couple days, and the problem truly was minifyEnabled: true
setting that as false makes it all good.

[Rajarml]

Here my proguard-rules.pro configuration which seems to ensure that any plugin is preserved during minification (tested with plugins: byteowls-capacitor-oauth2, capacitor-fcm, capacitor-secure-storage-plugin and those of capacitor-android):

-keep,allowobfuscation @interface com.getcapacitor.NativePlugin,com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod
-keep @com.getcapacitor.NativePlugin class * { *; }
-keepclasseswithmembernames class * {
  @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public *;
}

It could be put here and, as an embedded library proguard file, should be handled by any android/capacitor project.

Maybe it could be optimized but it does the job for me 😄!

[kyleabens]

@Rajarml How would you allow for a Cordova plugin in proguard-rules.pro? Would adding this work?

-keep class org.apache.cordova.** { *; }
-keep public class * extends org.apache.cordova.CordovaPlugin

[distante]

@Rajarml How would you allow for a Cordova plugin in proguard-rules.pro? Would adding this work?

-keep class org.apache.cordova.** { *; }
-keep public class * extends org.apache.cordova.CordovaPlugin

I would also like to know this. I moved my project from Cordova to Capacitor and it is something like 2.5MB bigger than the Cordova version. I would really like to be able to enable minifying.

[Zapominacz]

I had a similar issue. I mixed the above solutions to make my application work with the minifyEnabled. I will test this solution heavily.

Probably public <fields>; is not needed here. Thanks to specifying only public methods, the rest of the code is obfuscated.

-keep public class * extends org.apache.cordova.* {
    public <methods>;
    public <fields>;
}

-keep @com.getcapacitor.NativePlugin public class * {
    @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public <methods>;
}

[hschindler]

I have build problems too, with 'minifyEnabled=true'.

I working on Capacitor version 3 with Ionic (V5) and Angular (V11).

E/Capacitor: Error loading plugins. com.getcapacitor.q0: Could not find class by class path: com.capacitorjs.plugins.app.AppPlugin at com.getcapacitor.r0.a(Unknown Source:67) at com.getcapacitor.y.onStart(Unknown Source:18) at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnStart(Instrumentation.java:1333) at android.app.Activity.performStart(Activity.java:6992) at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2868) at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2983) at android.app.ActivityThread.-wrap11(Unknown Source:0) at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1668) at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:108) at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:206) at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:6760) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method) at com.android.internal.os.Zygote$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(Zygote.java:240) at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:845)

and than:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{xxx/xxx.MainActivity}: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'void g.a.a.g.q(java.lang.String, g.a.a.e, g.a.a.j, g.a.a.h)' on a null object reference

[Zapominacz]

Hi @hschindler

Native api in capacitor has changed.
For Capacitor v3 (ionic and angular version does not matter) with minifyEnabled true we should write in proguard-rules.pro:

-keep @com.getcapacitor.annotation.CapacitorPlugin public class * {
    @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public <methods>;
}

EDIT: Added directives for permissions and activities result:

-keep @com.getcapacitor.annotation.CapacitorPlugin public class * {
    @com.getcapacitor.annotation.PermissionCallback <methods>;
    @com.getcapacitor.annotation.ActivityCallback <methods>;
    @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public <methods>;
}

If older (v2) plugins are present, this also should be added:

-keep @com.getcapacitor.NativePlugin public class * {
    @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public <methods>;
}

And, if Cordova plugins are still present:

-keep public class * extends org.apache.cordova.* {
    public <methods>;
    public <fields>;
}

Tested on fresh project created with ionic cli with Capacitor v3, angular v12 and ionic v5

[Jesspu]

@Zapominacz yep this works. Just upgraded our app from capacitor 2 to 3. Ran into the white screen of death when doing a release build on android with minifyEnabled. After updating the proguard-rules.pro with the v3 version, it now works fine.

[Jesspu]

Hmm, the app builds, and the plugins work, but on fresh install, the app no longer prompts for permissions. The error I am seeing in logcat is There is no PermissionCallback method registered for the name: completeWatchPosition. Please define a callback method annotated with @PermissionCallback that receives arguments: (PluginCall)

If I set minifyEnabled false, it prompts for permissions as expected

[Zapominacz]

Ok, it looks I need to add proguard directive for one more annotation - will look at it shortly

[Jesspu]

So, it looks like if you manually request permissions for geolocation it works fine.

However, if you do NOT manually request, and try to use geolocation, it will just fail.

Looks like that is the same with file permissions. I have not tried manually requesting that yet, but guessing it will be the same.

So if minifyEnable is true, you want to make sure to manually request permissions.

If this can be resolved due to a proguard change, that would be preferable, just so you would not have to change any code, but it looks like there is a way around it.

[Jesspu]

Looks like I found another one, looks like it may be multiple call back methods, not just related to permissions.

Just dropping this here as it may be relevant. This was triggered using capacitor camera plugin on capacitor 3, trying to select image from gallery.

There is no ActivityCallback method registered for the name: processPickedImage. Please define a callback method annotated with @ActivityCallback that receives arguments: (PluginCall, ActivityResult)

This was after manually requesting, and granting permissions.

[Zapominacz]

@Jesspu This should do the job for v3 - I will test it soon. I forgot about two added annotations. @Permission probably can be omited.

Replace the "v3 part" of the solution above for this:

-keep @com.getcapacitor.annotation.CapacitorPlugin public class * {
    @com.getcapacitor.annotation.PermissionCallback <methods>;
    @com.getcapacitor.annotation.ActivityCallback <methods>;
    @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public <methods>;
}

[Zapominacz]

Ok, i removed public constraint as these methods can be private. Tested on fresh project located here: https://github.com/Zapominacz/issue_capacitor_739 Hope it will work now :)

[Jesspu]

Thanks so much, will test in the morning. Really appreciate you looking at this. Question, should this be merged into the base capacitor proguard file? That would probably save others from having to chase down this issue in the future. Or maybe just put in the docs on the Android configuration page.

…

On Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:21 PM Mikołaj Styś ***@***.***> wrote: Ok, i removed public constraint as these methods can be private. Tested on fresh project located here: https://github.com/Zapominacz/issue_capacitor_739 Hope it will work now :) — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#739 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAUN6P3ECNKV3HBRGXXHO2TTUOVVXANCNFSM4FP3FUFQ> .

[Jesspu]

@Zapominacz works great. Thanks so much!

[krisloekkegaard]

We still had issues with some plugins (e.g. Geolocation) after applying the fix suggested by @Zapominacz. Adding this line to our proguard-rules.pro fixed it:

-keep public class * extends com.getcapacitor.Plugin

So the full file looks like this:

-keep public class * extends com.getcapacitor.Plugin

-keep @com.getcapacitor.annotation.CapacitorPlugin public class * {
    @com.getcapacitor.annotation.PermissionCallback <methods>;
    @com.getcapacitor.annotation.ActivityCallback <methods>;
    @com.getcapacitor.PluginMethod public <methods>;
}

[lubomirblazekcz]

The proguard-rules should be added by default maybe? Or atleast added to the docs? Seems like a common issue on Android

[carlpoole]

The proguard rules that were added to Capacitor should cover proguard issues with Capacitor core and the plugin interfaces. If we missed one of those plugin interfaces in the Core project then we could get that fixed. If there is a specific Capacitor core plugin that needs a rule added, we are interested in resolving that issue with a particular plugin in the https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor-plugins repo, but this issue was focusing on addressing proguard rules for Capacitor core only.

-keep public class * extends com.getcapacitor.Plugin is a liberal rule that prevents any Capacitor plugin from being processed by proguard and is a heavy handed approach to preventing proguard issues in all plugins. If you are willing to add this to your project to avoid any proguard issues with any Capacitor plugin (core, community, or custom) and don't mind that any Plugin code will not be processed by proguard, then feel free to use it.

[ionitron-bot]

Thanks for the issue! This issue is being locked to prevent comments that are not relevant to the original issue. If this is still an issue with the latest version of Capacitor, please create a new issue and ensure the template is fully filled out.