Crash on Android when tapping on camera icon in compose box, in release mode

[rajveermalviya]

Logs:

$ flutter run --release
...
...
...
I/flutter (14099): [IMPORTANT:flutter/shell/platform/android/android_context_vk_impeller.cc(59)] Using the Impeller rendering backend (Vulkan).
I/flutter (14099): [IMPORTANT:flutter/shell/platform/android/android_context_vk_impeller.cc(59)] Using the Impeller rendering backend (Vulkan).
E/AndroidRuntime(14099): FATAL EXCEPTION: flutter-worker-1
E/AndroidRuntime(14099): Process: com.zulip.flutter, PID: 14099
E/AndroidRuntime(14099): java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError: Class 'android.content.res.XmlBlock$Parser' does not implement interface 'w7.a' in call to 'int w7.a.next()' (declaration of 'androidx.core.content.b' appears in /data/app/~~SJEWO15N5DtF7C3Opydr8A==/com.zulip.flutter-7Osxw0qoFXmxClFDo-wbPg==/base.apk)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at androidx.core.content.b.j(Unknown Source:19)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at androidx.core.content.b.g(Unknown Source:11)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at androidx.core.content.b.h(Unknown Source:1)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.l$b.b(Unknown Source:2)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.l.P(Unknown Source:51)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.l.X(Unknown Source:35)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.n.j(Unknown Source:68)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.s$f.n(Unknown Source:33)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.s$f.f(Unknown Source:0)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at p6.t.a(Unknown Source:2)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at j6.a$b.a(Unknown Source:17)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.c.l(Unknown Source:18)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.c.m(Unknown Source:41)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.c.i(Unknown Source:0)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.b.run(Unknown Source:12)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.c$h.d(Unknown Source:20)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.c$h.e(Unknown Source:0)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.c$h.b(Unknown Source:0)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at a6.d.run(Unknown Source:2)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1167)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:641)
E/AndroidRuntime(14099):        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:923)

Application finished.

[rajveermalviya]

Interestingly, the crash doesn't occur when ran with flutter run --release -Pshrink=false.

[rajveermalviya]

Initially occured on my personal device, but just tried reproducing it in Emulator (API 34) and it reproduces there too; crash doesn't occur when built with -Pshrink=false on the emulator too.

[gnprice]

Huh interesting, thanks for the report.

This definitely used to work. Can you find a previous version where it did work, and then bisect to find what change made it stop working?

(I'd guess the relevant change is either in Flutter upstream, or in package:image_picker — we don't really have code of our own that I'd expect to interact with whatever triggers this bug.)

[rajveermalviya]

Okay, so git bisect with flutter checkout 3.22.0-29.0.pre between v0.0.14 (good) and v0.0.15 (bad), it leads to 6e8d8b0.

Which seems unrelated, but could be something to do with video_player's Android build config.

Found an upstream report with similar error message — flutter/flutter#146266

[rajveermalviya]

Just tested that the crash doesn't occur with updated AGP and other related dependecies, including enabling coreLibraryDesugaringEnabled to fix an error encoutered while updating AGP for package:flutter_local_notifications, see — https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_local_notifications#gradle-setup.

diff --git a/android/app/build.gradle b/android/app/build.gradle
index dd4178c..4f01760 100644
--- a/android/app/build.gradle
+++ b/android/app/build.gradle
@@ -23,9 +23,10 @@ android {
     namespace "com.zulip.flutter"
 
     compileSdkVersion flutter.compileSdkVersion
-    ndkVersion flutter.ndkVersion
+    ndkVersion '27.0.12077973'
 
     compileOptions {
+        coreLibraryDesugaringEnabled true
         sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
         targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
     }
@@ -97,4 +98,5 @@ flutter {
 
 dependencies {
     implementation "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib-jdk7:$kotlinVersion"
+    coreLibraryDesugaring 'com.android.tools:desugar_jdk_libs:2.0.4'
 }
diff --git a/android/gradle.properties b/android/gradle.properties
index 740bb74..ee5e36e 100644
--- a/android/gradle.properties
+++ b/android/gradle.properties
@@ -6,11 +6,11 @@ android.enableJetifier=true
 # Defining them here makes them available both in
 # settings.gradle and in the build.gradle files.
 
-agpVersion=8.1.4
+agpVersion=8.5.0
 
 # Generally update this to the version found in recent releases
 # of Android Studio, as listed in this table:
 #   https://kotlinlang.org/docs/releases.html#release-details
 # A helpful discussion is at:
 #   https://stackoverflow.com/a/74425347
-kotlinVersion=1.9.10
+kotlinVersion=2.0.10
diff --git a/android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties b/android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties
index 07e42d5..545935f 100644
--- a/android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties
+++ b/android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 #  the wrapper is the one from the new Gradle too.)
 distributionBase=GRADLE_USER_HOME
 distributionPath=wrapper/dists
-distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-8.6-all.zip
+distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-8.9-all.zip
 networkTimeout=10000
 validateDistributionUrl=true
 zipStoreBase=GRADLE_USER_HOME

---

Alternative (and simpler) fix is to disable R8 fullmode temporarily, but it might affect build sizes:

# android/gradle.properties
android.enableR8.fullMode=false

---

Though the root cause still remains unknown, the different AGP release notes doesn't say much — https://developer.android.com/build/releases/past-releases/agp-8-4-0-release-notes.

[gnprice]

Fascinating, thanks. Yeah, presumably the trigger must be something in the package:video_player Android build config.

Also interesting that those upgrades fix it. We should probably take them anyway... except that NDK upgrade, where it'd be nice to stick to the one from Flutter upstream. Do things work if you leave that one out?

[rajveermalviya]

Keeping the ndk version to flutter.ndkVersion results in following warnings (in red text) but the build does succeed:

Your project is configured with Android NDK 23.1.7779620, but the following plugin(s) depend on a different Android NDK version:
- app_settings requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- device_info_plus requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- file_picker requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- firebase_core requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- firebase_messaging requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- flutter_local_notifications requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- flutter_plugin_android_lifecycle requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- image_picker_android requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- integration_test requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- package_info_plus requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- path_provider_android requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- share_plus requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- sqlite3_flutter_libs requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- url_launcher_android requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- video_player_android requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
- zulip_plugin requires Android NDK 26.1.10909125
Fix this issue by using the highest Android NDK version (they are backward compatible).
Add the following to /Users/rajveer/Projects/zulip-flutter/android/app/build.gradle:

    android {
        ndkVersion = "26.1.10909125"
        ...
    }

To avoid this, the above diff updates it to the latest LTS version — 27.0.12077973

---

Also, interestingly removing the explicit ndkVersion line from build.gradle results in a successful build without any warnings.

[gnprice]

Interesting. I wonder what the point is of flutter.ndkVersion if plugins (including first-party plugins, which many on that list are) can end up requiring a newer version, and if things work fine when the app doesn't specify it.

I guess let's just delete that line, then, and let the NDK version be determined automatically from the other things in the build.

And then a PR that does that and the other Android-related upgrades in your diff above would be great. For the branch, please split the different changes into different commits: Gradle, AGP, Kotlin, NDK, coreLibraryDesugaring (in some order). That way they can each have their own commit message pointing to relevant release notes.

For example commit messages… well hmm, it looks like we've been neglecting these upgrades a bit (based on scanning git log --stat -p android/app/build.gradle android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties). 🙂
(edit: ah no, it's that that git log command needed to include android/gradle.properties. That's where our AGP version and Kotlin version live. Discovered this at #887 (comment) .)
One good example is:
2599a99 deps android: Upgrade Gradle to 8.6, the latest

You can find more examples in the zulip-mobile repo, with git log --stat -p --grep version: --invert-grep android/app/build.gradle android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties.

[gnprice]

Also updated that upstream issue (flutter/flutter#146266 (comment)) with our findings here. In particular it doesn't look like it was previously known on that issue thread that an AGP upgrade resolves it, so that should be helpful for other people hitting the issue.