I just hit a weird thing: our app would crash with...

# android

[wasyl]

I just hit a weird thing: our app would crash with the following error:
java.lang.LinkageError: Method void com.example.h72.a() overrides final method in class Lcom.example/de; (declaration of 'com.example.h72' appears in base.apk).
That’s after obfuscation with R8. The cause was we’d have the following class hierarchy:
androidx.lifecycle.ViewModel <- BaseViewModel <- SomeViewModel, and in SomeViewModel we’d have a fun clear() { } method. However, method with same name and signature appears in `androidx.lifecycle.ViewModel.java`: final void clear().

What I quite don’t understand is, why everything works without R8? I clearly see public final void clear() method in the decompiled SomeViewModel, and so feels like things should crash straight away. What happens instead, app works fine without R8 and only crashes with it. 😕 Any idea what might be the reason?

[Zach Kovar]

I am pretty sure I filed a bug to Google with this exact issue

[Zach Kovar]

It was extremely frustrating to have release builds crash (with r8) and debug builds work just fine

[wasyl]

@Zach Kovar I had a feeling it might be a bug in R8 (it shouldn’t really make the app crash) but thought maybe someone has more insight into this.

[wasyl]

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/139939453 nice. Exactly the same case, closed because someone didn’t answer bunch of irrelevant questions smh

[Tolriq]

Well it's opened in the wrong place 😉 Open R8 issues at https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=componentid:326788%20status:open they are reactive, efficient and nice 🙂

[Zach Kovar]

Come to look back at it - I can't find the issue I thought I filed, so maybe I didn't 😅 I just renamed the method to something other than clear() which is kind of a blah fix, but at least it was a work-around

[wasyl]

@Tolriq thanks for the hint, I noticed that too and already reopened it at https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/148429150