Android Studio 3.0 Unable to merge dex

Question

Just Updated android studio from 2.3.3 to 3.0 now I am having the error

Error:Execution failed for task \':app:transformDexArchiveWithExternalLibsDexMergerFo         


        

Answer 1

I looked up:

Error:Execution failed for task ':memDicez:transformDexArchiveWithExternalLibsDexMergerForDebug'.

com.android.builder.dexing.DexArchiveMergerException: Unable to merge dex

yesterday and found nothing usefull,

my issue is now solved,

this method might get you towards a solution (it worked for me, no guarantee it works for you)

I had:

android {
    compileSdkVersion 25
    buildToolsVersion '26.0.2'

    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "(my secret applicationId)"
        minSdkVersion 21
        targetSdkVersion 25
        multiDexEnabled true
    }

    ...

}

and

dependencies {
    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:25.3.1'
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:25.3.1'
    compile 'ch.acra:acra:4.9.2'
    //compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-auth:9.0.0'
    compile 'com.loopj.android:android-async-http:1.4.9'
    compile 'com.koushikdutta.ion:ion:2.+'
    compile group: 'com.googlecode.json-simple', name: 'json-simple', version: '1.1.1'
}

and when I changed:

        minSdkVersion 21

to

        minSdkVersion 16

I got a more descriptive error message which did give solutions via google/stack overflow.

in my case

compile group: 'com.googlecode.json-simple', name: 'json-simple', version: '1.1.1'

should be changed to

compile('com.googlecode.json-simple:json-simple:1.1.1') {
    exclude group: 'org.hamcrest', module: 'hamcrest-core'
}

You can change the minSdkVersion back to a higher value later on but decreasing it seems to give a more descriptive (or more googleable) problem (and solution)

cheers,

S.