1286677 - Re-evaluate multidex method limit solution before using gradle for production builds

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: Android Studio and Gradle Integration, defect)

Description

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only; no longer employed by Mozilla]]

In bug 1285511, we implemented a quick fix for exceeding the method limit since these builds are only run in automation. Before we run with gradle for our production builds, we should re-evaluate this decision and its trade-offs.

Comment 1

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only; no longer employed by Mozilla]]

fwiw, I believe multidex can cause performance issues so we want to fix this if we also ever use gradle for performance-oriented tests.

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only; no longer employed by Mozilla]]

Note that I don't intend to optimize the multidex solution for local builds (as per [1]) in bug 1285511.

[1]: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html#dev-build

Comment 3

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only; no longer employed by Mozilla]]

(In reply to Michael Comella (:mcomella) from comment #2)
> Note that I don't intend to optimize the multidex solution for local builds
> (as per [1]) in bug 1285511.

It looks like Nick may have already done this, but it'd be worth double-checking his solution.

Comment 4

[Teng-pao Yu [:tyu]]

I've compiled some data from TreeHereder to see how close are we to the 64K limit and a glimpse to the trend,

seems like we'll run into that limit at any time.

link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gzn89BGXkgikcihODEy1XUWzEYf8CGU2gi7-S-zJNuo/edit?usp=sharing

excerpt:

		Method	Field
2017.06.01	60704	35864
2017.05.15	48491	27332
2017.05.01	48255	27254
2017.04.22	54632	28050
2017.04.16	54655	28066
2017.04.01	54615	28043
2017.03.15	54415	27938
2017.03.01	54147	27857

Another big code landing would probably make us exceed the limit, given that we could have as much as 12,000 more methods in just half a month.

I'll take a look at what I can do to help.

Comment 5

[Teng-pao Yu [:tyu]]

Will need to unassign myself because of shifting to some other items.