Android Studio Desugar: Transform Classes with Desugar for Debug fails

Question

My Android Studio project recently stopped building properly. I do not know what caused this issue.

Here is what I tried

• I tried to build my project with different Android Studio versions, i.e. stable and different Canary channel versions, no change
• I changed SDK versions around. My project built properly with SDK 26, but now it does not, also not with SDK 27
• I swapped build tools and Gradle versions around, my project built properly with Gradle plugin 3.1.0-alpha2 and build tools version 26.0.2. I tried many
• I used the "Clean Project", "Invalidate Caches"... functions in Android Studio uncountable times
• I deleted my build folders
• I switched Proguard on and off
• I tried fixing possible library issues, but all of it did not help

I think I actually changed everything back to the settings I used successfully before and my other projects with similar settings just build fine.

Full error code:

Error:java.lang.RuntimeException: com.android.build.api.transform.TransformException: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.RuntimeException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: Error while executing java process with main class com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar with arguments {@...\app\build\intermediates\tmp\desugar_args165654356027684238}

Error:com.android.build.api.transform.TransformException: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.RuntimeException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: Error while executing java process with main class com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar with arguments {@...\app\build\intermediates\tmp\desugar_args165654356027684238}
Error:java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.RuntimeException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: Error while executing java process with main class com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar with arguments {@...\app\build\intermediates\tmp\desugar_args165654356027684238}
Error:java.lang.RuntimeException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: Error while executing java process with main class com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar with arguments {@...\app\build\intermediates\tmp\desugar_args165654356027684238}
Error:com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: Error while executing java process with main class com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar with arguments {@...\app\build\intermediates\tmp\desugar_args165654356027684238}

Error:org.gradle.process.internal.ExecException: Process 'command '...\jre\bin\java.exe'' finished with non-zero exit value 1

Problem description

I have no clue what could (have) cause(d) this issue and I am clueless about what to try next, which is the reason why I am asking you for help. I hope anyone has any other help than what I could find.

I tagged Firebase because I think that the library might be the crucial point of my problem, now the problem is that it will never explain the sudden stop. I use FirebaseUI in my application and tried the old working dependencies, but also upgrading Firebase and then using this guide to match the outdated UI library. I also removed FirebaseUI, but this did neither make a successful build.

Answer 1

For me, it happened to be the version of the Leanplum library I was using — although I was unable to surface the error through gradle, I got annoyed enough to find the Desugar sources in the bazel, build it, and then copy the command line arguments from my failing gradle build, which led me to the Leanplum jar, which appeared to have a name collision between two different obfuscated elements:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalStateException: Already recorded as class: com/leanplum/a/x
    at com.google.common.base.Preconditions.checkState(Preconditions.java:582)
    at com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.ClassVsInterface.addKnownInterfaces(ClassVsInterface.java:46)
    at com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.InterfaceDesugaring.visit(InterfaceDesugaring.java:96)
    at org.objectweb.asm.ClassReader.accept(ClassReader.java:621)
    at org.objectweb.asm.ClassReader.accept(ClassReader.java:500)
    at com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar.desugarClassesInInput(Desugar.java:477)
    at com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar.desugarOneInput(Desugar.java:361)
    at com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar.desugar(Desugar.java:314)
    at com.google.devtools.build.android.desugar.Desugar.main(Desugar.java:711)

I think this worked for me because the newer version of Desugar has better error reporting... So if like me you are unable to figure out what's going on, it's possible that

• installing bazel (I used homebrew on the mac)
• then building your own version of Desugar (the command I used from the root of the bazel repo was bazel build //src/tools/android/java/com/google/devtools/build/android/desugar:Desugar),
• and then copy & pasting the CLI arguments from your failing gradle build will lead to insight. (the command ended up looking like this: path/to/your/built/Desugar --verbose --input /Users/you/yourApp/app/build/intermediates/transforms/stackFramesFixer/envDev/debug/109.jar .... --desugar_try_with_resources_if_needed --desugar_try_with_resources_omit_runtime_classes)

I was expecting to have to add my own error logging to Desugar to catch this, but happily enough that was unnecessary.