ActionBarActivity closes after pressing hardware menu button. Without stack trace

Question

I have a really strange problem. When I use ActionBarActivity after clicking on hardware menu button (device with Android 2.3) the app closes unexpectedly without any particular error. Logcat gives only:

W/KeyCharacterMap﹕ No keyboard for id 0
W/KeyCharacterMap﹕ Using default keymap: /system/usr/keychars/qwerty.kcm.bin
30-30/? I/DEBUG﹕ *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
03-19 15:54:48.612        30-30/? I/DEBUG﹕ Build fingerprint: 'generic/sdk/generic/:2.2/FRF91/43546:eng/test-keys'
03-19 15:54:48.612        30-30/? I/DEBUG﹕ pid: 785, tid: 785  >>> com.myapp <<<
03-19 15:54:48.612        30-30/? I/DEBUG﹕ signal 11 (SIGSEGV), fault addr 00000002
03-19 15:54:48.612        30-30/? I/DEBUG﹕ r0 00000000  r1 00000001  r2 00000001  r3 00000002
03-19 15:54:48.612        30-30/? I/DEBUG﹕ r4 bead28a4  r5 0000aa50  r6 001240a8  r7 0022b860
...

Code:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.main, menu);

    return false;
}

The issue appears if main.xml has any element.

I use 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:19.0.+' as my gradle dependency.

All works fine when I use Activity.

Answer 1

Reported also at Android App crashes upon menu button click, this appears to be an issue with the latest 0.9.1 version of gradle and I can confirm that it kills apps on Froyo as well as Gingerbread. Read more about a similar problem here and another report here. The issue seems to be related to a new png processor. As mentioned by uchidev, the solution for now is to use gradle 0.9.0 by changing build.gradle.

An alternate suggestion to reverting: you can add android.aaptOptions.useAaptPngCruncher = true to build.gradle.

Update 3/28/14: This bug seems to have been fixed in Android Studio 0.5.3.

Answer 2

I encountered the just same problem today. Please change 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.9.+' of a build.gradle file into 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.9.0' and, sync project. I think that Gradle plugin version 0.9.1 is wrong.