Multidex Support on Android

Is there any news on when MultiDex builds might be an option? This limitation has truly passed critical mass already for many projects.

 

Could you build as an android project (e.g: not as APK) and then perform the final build into an APK to support this ?

 

But you cannot export to Android Studio, either. When you try to export to Android Studio, Unity still bombs out with the error "Error building Player: CommandInvokationFailure: Unable to convert classes into dex format. See the Console for details." And in the details for the console, you find:

stderr[
trouble writing output: Too many method references: 66241; max is 65536.
You may try using --multi-dex option.
References by package:
6 android.accessibilityservice

etc.

In other words, you cannot use this solution - you can't even make it to Android Studio project in the first place!

 

I'm totally willing to try, but Unity won't export such a project in the first place. Are you saying that I should do some dance like:

1. Manually remove jars and android library projects from /Assets/Plugins/Android so that Unity will build the player successfully
2. Export to Android Studio
3. Satisfy those dependencies myself from Android studio

In other words, I have to give up all of the automated building that Android plugins do for a Unity project in order to do this?

 

The root cause of all of this is things like a publisher insisting that you use a particular set of SDK's. The combination of several Ad networks' SDK's plus Google Play services (yes, even a manually stripped down version of gms at that!) still puts even a trivial Unity game over the method limit.

Granted, yes, those Ads SDK's are fat bastards! But such is life.

 

@bitter As Claytonious pointed out, what is the solution for not being able to export to Android Studio because of the Unity dexing step?

@Claytonious, have you figured out a solution?

 

@bitter, are there any updates? As @Claytonious and @psydent pointed out, exporting to Android Studio does not work either because the dexing occurs on export as well as on build.

 

Hi @bitter, thanks for your reply. I created a bug report, which can be found here: https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?745412_3nsvkjj1bu3k0k53.

 

@bitter, Ideally I'd like to be able to build and run the project in Unity, and be able to take advantage of Unity Cloud Build, but I understand that the fix you had referred to was to be able to export the project to Android Studio only.

 

@bitter would it be possible to specify which components of the google play services from within unity using the build.gradle as described here: https://developers.google.com/android/guides/setup
this would avoid having to strip the jars and potentially use multidex

 

@bitter from what I have read, this is the support that google have offered to deal with the large number of function inside the google play services (>20k) to allow user to use more of the 64k limit

*edit*
ok penny dropped - you still need to use ProGuard to make sure the the other libs an't included :/

 

@bitter it is true that multidex causes issues in older devices however for developers such as myself who are targeting only modern ones we shouldn't have that limit. Multidex should be optional when targeting API 14 and up http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html which is now more then 95% of the market. In our specific case we are trying to port 12M users to unity but our multidex issues continuously get in the way

 

Awesome news. Thank you - eager and ready to try it out.

 

Hi guys, I ran into the ref count limitation so I built a Android Studio project with 5.3.1. I am unable to build an APK though because I run into this error signing the APK: "Error:Android Packager: java.io.IOException: Keystore was tampered with, or password was incorrect".

I'm using the same keystore file that works in Unity with the same password. If I enter an invalid keystore or key password Android Studio even prompts me before the build that they are incorrect.

Has anyone encountered this problem? Found a work around?

Thanks.

 

@bitter Heya, I was wondering about the status of ProGuard support during the Unity build process? And will these fixes be available in 5.2.x ? Thanks!

 

I had many errors when exporting the project, in the end I used a utility called JarJar to reduce the size of the google play services - was the path of least resistance.

 

@noyeti How did you determine what to strip and what to keep? Or did you already have it exported into and Android project and had dependencies determined?

 

guess work

I had:
keep com.google.android.gms.analytics.*
keep com.google.android.gms.auth.*
keep com.google.android.gms.common.*
keep com.google.android.gms.ads.*
keep com.google.ads.*

I think I only required the advertisers id from GPS, I could have stripped more but wasn't inclined to re-test all the features to make sure nothing was broken. I am sure I could have opened the exported android project and used proguard but the number of errors I was getting and the time fixing that meant I decided to strip the play services instead.

(downside is you would need re-visit this setup if you were to add some new functionality such as google maps, probably need to re-strip it when targeting later versions of the android platform)

More fun was getting the launchMode set to "standard" (instead of singleTask) without using the exported android project but that's another story.

 

Is there a way to find out what parts are used?
I tried to remove google.android.nearby, but apparently GPGS uses that during login.

I'm having to dig into the .jar files and remove classes that sound like they probably aren't used by me.
Is there a better way?

 

Unfortunately, we haven't really found a better way then just manually stripping the files. We mainly stripped third party libraries, were we where sure that the stripped classes were not used.

What you can also try is to "repackage" your libraries, i.e. moving them all to a common namespace as described in point (4) in:
https://androidthoughts.wordpress.c...version-to-dalvik-format-failed-with-error-2/

That worked for a couple of libraries for us (but not all).

 

I tried to generate an Android Project but I get some issue during the process :/.
I need to do this cause I have the 65k references issues with my apk due to a huge plugins number -_- (thx to the customer)
I mean I generate the "Android Project" but after this I can't generate an APK nor a direct runtime build on a device cause I always have issues with my plugins.

My hierarchy is this one :
Plugins/Android/{list_plugins_folders}

but when I build the Android Project, I didn't know if I must open the project generate from the root which contains all plugins folder and build folder or if I must open only the build folder then associate each plugin with a dependancie.

Another thing is : Do I must convert all the project to a gradle one ? It seems to be the best way but I don't really know if it's really much more effective ?

Any ETA for the proguard support directly in Unity android build ?

 

@bitter is there any update on proguard support? Thanks!

 

I too am very interesting in any details and resources on how this works!

 

Any updates on this? I need the DEX limit fixed for Unity. Thanks.

 

what kind of plugins have you in your project ?
I succeed to solve this issue by limiting the number of Google Play Services plugins integrated in my project. So do you use Google Play Services ?

 

Mirroring my reply from this thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/too-many-method-references-max-is-65536.327064/page-2#post-2777571

 

Any updates on this? This post is pretty quiet. Is proguard or multi-dex supported in any new versions of Unity? I am in the planning stages for a new project and the client wants a ton of ad networks, so I need to know what my options are. Thanks.

 

Unity 5.5 supports Gradle, so you should be able to set up proguard eventually.
I've deliberately mentioned "eventually", since setting it up can oftentimes be a difficult and long game of trial & error, and also because last time i checked, you can't provide a custom gradle build file of your own (it uses a single default one from the Unity installation folder), so customizing this process is a bit hacky at the moment.

Should be probably made better soon in an update / patch release.

 

Actually, now that this new option is in 5.5, we're pretty much there because building to a Gradle project respects the [PostProcessBuild] attribute, so you can monkey with the generated build.gradle file yourself before invoking gradle to build the APK:

Code (CSharp):

1. [PostProcessBuild]
2. public static void OnPostprocessBuild(BuildTarget buildTarget, string pathToBuiltProject)
3. {
4.     if (buildTarget == BuildTarget.Android)
5.     {
6.         string productName = PlayerSettings.productName;
7.         string gradleFilename = PathExtensions.Combine(pathToBuiltProject, productName, "build.gradle");
8.         Debug.Log("Processing build.gradle at [" + gradleFilename + "]");
9.         // Do stuff to build.gradle, like turn on Multidex, etc.
10.     }
11. }
12.  

Then you can just invoke gradle yourself to build the APK as part of your pipeline. Works pretty nicely now. We were able to delete a ton of custom code that did this ourselves previously.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. EditorUserBuildSettings.androidBuildSystem = AndroidBuildSystem.Gradle;
3. EditorUserBuildSettings.exportAsGoogleAndroidProject = true;
4. BuildPipeline.BuildPlayer(...your scenes, etc....)
5. // Invoke Gradle with System.Diagnostics.Process...
6.  

 

Can you give more details on that?

 

What details are you looking for?

 

I have solved the problem. Thank you.

 

@Loomabox How did you end up solving the problem.
Or what exactly did you solve, can we specify the Multidex gradle attribute from within Unity, without having to export into Android Studio.

 

First option: Build with Gradle.
You'll probably have to fix a lot of conflicts to make it work.
If Gradle fails with DexIndexOverflowException (same problem), follow this.

 

On newer versions of Unity this is fixed.
You have to change the Build System from File->Build Settings to Gradle.
Then you have to add a file named: mainTemplate.gradle in your Assets/Plugins/Android/ folder. This file should look like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. // GENERATED BY UNITY. REMOVE THIS COMMENT TO PREVENT OVERWRITING WHEN EXPORTING AGAIN
2. buildscript {
3.     repositories {
4.         jcenter()
5.     }
6.  
7.     dependencies {
8.         classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.1.0'
9.     }
10. }
11.  
12. allprojects {
13.    repositories {
14.       flatDir {
15.         dirs 'libs'
16.       }
17.    }
18. }
19.  
20. apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
21.  
22. dependencies {
23.     compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
24. **DEPS**}
25.  
26. android {
27.     compileSdkVersion **APIVERSION**
28.     buildToolsVersion '**BUILDTOOLS**'
29.  
30.     defaultConfig {
31.         targetSdkVersion **TARGETSDKVERSION**
32.         applicationId '**APPLICATIONID**'
33.     }
34.  
35.     lintOptions {
36.         abortOnError false
37.     }
38. **SIGN**
39.     buildTypes {
40.         debug {
41.             jniDebuggable true
42.             multiDexEnabled true
43.         }
44.         release {
45.             minifyEnabled false
46.             multiDexEnabled true
47.             proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-unity.txt'
48.             **SIGNCONFIG**
49.         }
50.     }
51.  
52. }

As you can see multiDexEnabled true on debug and release build types.

Then, on the AndroidManifest.xml, (Assets/Plugins/Android/) you have to add multidex to application tag:

Code (CSharp):

1. <application
2.     android:theme="@style/UnityThemeSelector"
3.     android:icon="@drawable/app_icon"
4.     android:label="@string/app_name"
5.     android:debuggable="true"
6.     android:name="android.support.multidex.MultiDexApplication">
7. ...
8. </application>

 

If your game supports Android versions older than 5.0, i think this will not work, since the MultiDexApplication was not available to those OS versions.

You can check out this link for reference: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html
Specifically, check out the section named 'Multidex support prior to Android 5.0'

 

Yes but if you use your own custom Application subclass compiled from Java, you can support pre 5.0 devices, too.

 

Why not use Gradle in unity , and enable multidexing it fixed the problem and i didn't have to export the project anymore also i didn't use pro guard. Gradle it self reduces the method reference count.

 

Hello,
@nicolas_lorusso I followed your instructions, but i got this error

CommandInvokationFailure: Gradle build failed.
C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.8.0_31\bin\java.exe -classpath "C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Data\PlaybackEngines\AndroidPlayer\Tools\gradle\lib\gradle-launcher-2.14.jar" org.gradle.launcher.GradleMain "assembleDebug"

stderr[
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Unity Projects\MyGame\Temp\gradleOut\src\main\AndroidManifest.xml:17:3-79 Error:
Element uses-permission#android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE at AndroidManifest.xml:17:3-79 duplicated with element declared at AndroidManifest.xml:12:3-106
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Unity Projects\My Game\Temp\gradleOut\src\main\AndroidManifest.xml Error:
Validation failed, exiting

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task 'rocessDebugManifest'.
> Manifest merger failed with multiple errors, see logs


I have the facebook, everyplay, google ads sdk in the test game

Did you have an idea, how to solve it?

Thanks

 

Hi guys, our project was doing well in version 5.3.5, after upgrading to 5.4.6 it started to throwing an error about DEX limitation 65k. what happened?

I know I can solve it with gradle, multidex or stripping some code. I dont look for solution just curious why it happened after upgrading the unity?

 

@warmanw If you drag your old apk into Android Studio (or go to Build -> Analyze APK), assuming you have Android Studio >= 3.0.1, you can click on classes.dex and it'll show you how large your dex count is and where exactly most of the methods/references are coming from.

I'm guessing your old apk was only just under the dex count (65536) and upgrading to the newer Unity just pushed it over the edge a little bit.

I think when you go over the limit Unity will post some dex count details in the console where you can see how much over your dex count is. If it's only over by a very small amount and you don't plan to add more libraries to your game, I'd suggest stripping as much as you can to get it under the limit.

Otherwise multidex, proguard or downgrading your unity are the next options.

 

@leite2 this stuff is always fun. You could try experiment with android manifest merging with the tools:replace tool, but you might not have much luck with that. Try look into all your android manifests in your project and see if there is a duplicate WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE tag. If there isn't, then it's somewhere in your libraries. One option is to extract your libraries, modify the AndroidManifest, and compress it back. I'd suggest exporting to an Android Studio project while doing this as it lets you trial and error a lot faster.

 

@kiwipxl we dont use android studio, just build from unity with gradle, Thanks for the response, The limit is exceeded twice 13k . So there is no know thing that unity 2017 uses special method to build which exceeds the method calls. we actually have fixed it with gradle + proguard. however I was curious why after upgrading from 5.3.5.

 

I have written an article with which you can directly create unity game with multidex enabled through unity. No need to export project.
Link - https://medium.com/@abhpatidar/solving-unity-dex-issue-538e134c8809