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Why do people always talk about multidexing like it's such a nightmare? https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html https://developer.android.com/

Why do people always talk about multidexing like it's such a nightmare? https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html It's really not that bad, It only gets a little squirrely if you're trying to support super old android versions.

karmelapple 10y ago
Our app's build time ballooned by 2-3X or more when we went to multidex. We've had some luck reducing it, but we'd still like to axe multidex. I definitely consider a 3X build time increase (not 30 seconds to 90 seconds, but 1 or 2 min to 5-8) to be a significant problem, bordering on nightmare... especially since we just included a few more libraries that put us past the 65k mark. Is that what other people have seen?
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
  Surely that's just a release build, though...? How would this bottleneck productivity for a team?
  - orbitur 10y ago
    When you deploy release-like builds to your QA team (as you should), a tripled-build time is a bit problematic if you're trying to iterate quickly.
    - Benjammer 10y ago
      Who needs to "iterate" so quickly that several minutes added to your build time becomes a huge issue?
      - BoorishBears 10y ago
        Me? I work on embedded android installations that have over a thousand years combined of running with 0 software crashes. Once I get to a certain point in developing an app for our installations I start profiling for the slightest memory leaks by watching changes in memory usage profiles for different user flows. And I can only do that with release builds if I want useful numbers. I've had us split up apps over build times because of Multidex (for example, most of our AWS centric code lives in a separate app that exposes specific functions via an AIDL interface because the SDK was bringing in too many methods)
- Benjammer 10y ago
  How is your dev pipeline set up such that an 8 minute release build becomes such a problem?
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    I guess I'm thinking of builds on my machine taking that long, not even release builds.

karmelapple 10y ago

Our app's build time ballooned by 2-3X or more when we went to multidex. We've had some luck reducing it, but we'd still like to axe multidex. I definitely consider a 3X build time increase (not 30 seconds to 90 seconds, but 1 or 2 min to 5-8) to be a significant problem, bordering on nightmare... especially since we just included a few more libraries that put us past the 65k mark. Is that what other people have seen?

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
Surely that's just a release build, though...? How would this bottleneck productivity for a team?
- orbitur 10y ago
  When you deploy release-like builds to your QA team (as you should), a tripled-build time is a bit problematic if you're trying to iterate quickly.
  - Benjammer 10y ago
    Who needs to "iterate" so quickly that several minutes added to your build time becomes a huge issue?
    - BoorishBears 10y ago
      Me? I work on embedded android installations that have over a thousand years combined of running with 0 software crashes. Once I get to a certain point in developing an app for our installations I start profiling for the slightest memory leaks by watching changes in memory usage profiles for different user flows. And I can only do that with release builds if I want useful numbers. I've had us split up apps over build times because of Multidex (for example, most of our AWS centric code lives in a separate app that exposes specific functions via an AIDL interface because the SDK was bringing in too many methods)
Benjammer 10y ago
How is your dev pipeline set up such that an 8 minute release build becomes such a problem?
- karmelapple 10y ago
  I guess I'm thinking of builds on my machine taking that long, not even release builds.