Android Gradle Plugin 2.0.0 (April 2016)

Dependencies:
New:
  • Enables Instant Run by supporting bytecode injection, and pushing code and resource updates to a running app on the emulator or a physical device.
  • Added support for incremental builds, even when the app isn’t running. Full build times are improved by pushing incremental changes through the Android Debug Bridge to the connected device.
  • Added maxProcessCount to control how many worker dex processes can be spawned concurrently. The following code, in the module-level build.gradle file, sets the maximum number of concurrent processes to 4:

    Groovy

    android {
      ...
      dexOptions {
        maxProcessCount = 4 // this is the default value
      }
    }
    

    Kotlin

    android {
      ...
      dexOptions {
        maxProcessCount = 4 // this is the default value
      }
    }
    
  • Added an experimental code shrinker to support pre-dexing and reduce re-dexing of dependencies, which are not supported with Proguard. This improves the build speed of your debug build variant. Because the experimental shrinker does not support optimization and obfuscation, you should enable Proguard for your release builds. To enable the experimental shrinker for your debug builds, add the following to your module-level build.gradle file:

    Groovy

    android {
      ...
      buildTypes {
        debug {
          minifyEnabled true
          useProguard false
        }
        release {
          minifyEnabled true
          useProguard true // this is a default setting
        }
      }
    }
    

    Kotlin

    android {
      ...
      buildTypes {
        getByName("debug") {
          minifyEnabled = true
          useProguard = false
        }
        getByName("release") {
          minifyEnabled = true
          useProguard = true // this is a default setting
        }
      }
    }
    
  • Added logging support and improved performance for the resource shrinker. The resource shrinker now logs all of its operations into a resources.txt file located in the same folder as the Proguard log files.
Changed behavior:
  • When minSdkVersion is set to 18 or higher, APK signing uses SHA256.
  • DSA and ECDSA keys can now sign APK packages.

    Note: The Android keystore provider no longer supports DSA keys on Android 6.0 (API level 23) and higher.

Fixed issues:
  • Fixed an issue that caused duplicate AAR dependencies in both the test and main build configurations.