proguard gradle debug build but not the tests

Question

I enabled proguard for the debug build using:

android {
    buildTypes {
        debug {
            runProguard true
            proguardFile \'proguard-deb         


        

Answer 1

runProguard is old. It was replaced with minifyEnabled

With minifyEnabled (and other changes in new versions of gradle) you will may encounter issues where the proguard config works for your debug apk but not for the instrumentation tests. The apk created for instrumentation tests will use its own proguard file, so changing your existing proguard file will have no effect.

In this case, you need to specify the proguard file to use on the instrumentation tests. It can be quite permissive because it's not affecting your debug and release builds at all.

    // inside android block
    debug {
        shrinkResources true  // removes unused graphics etc
        minifyEnabled true
        proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        testProguardFile('test-proguard-rules.pro')
    }