After Upgrading to Google Play Services 9.0.0, App Hangs in DynamiteModulesC

Question

Upgraded an app in development to 9.0.0 with these changes and a regeneration of google-services.json:

classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:3.0.0'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:9.0.0'

After upgrade, when the app initializes, the expected sequence of logcat messages appear. After about 7 seconds, the same sequence of messages is output again, with added header background_crash. For example:

17:39:30.162 5453-5453/com.xxx.nub:background_crash I/MultiDex: install done

The app operates normally until it becomes hidden, for example by starting an activity in another app. After 5 seconds the system detects that the app is hung:

05-20 17:40:10.315 5138-5138/com.xxx.nub I/MainActivity: STOP MainActivity
05-20 17:40:10.375 5138-5138/com.xxx.nub I/NubApplication: onTrimMemory(): TRIM_MEMORY_UI_HIDDEN
05-20 17:40:10.375 5138-5138/com.xxx.nub D/FirebaseApp: Notifying background state change listeners.
05-20 17:45:10.465 5138-5143/com.xxx.nub I/dalvikvm: threadid=3: reacting to signal 3
05-20 17:45:10.565 5138-5143/com.xxx.nub I/dalvikvm: Wrote stack traces to '/data/anr/traces.txt'

The stack trace shows the app is hung in com.google.android.gms.DynamiteModulesC

----- pid 5138 at 2016-05-20 17:45:10 -----
Cmd line: com.xxx.nub

JNI: CheckJNI is off; workarounds are off; pins=0; globals=295

DALVIK THREADS:
(mutexes: tll=0 tsl=0 tscl=0 ghl=0)

"main" prio=5 tid=1 WAIT
  | group="main" sCount=1 dsCount=0 obj=0x416c5ea0 self=0x415bb5d0
  | sysTid=5138 nice=-11 sched=0/0 cgrp=apps handle=1073844564
  | state=S schedstat=( 0 0 0 ) utm=1774 stm=244 core=1
  at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)
  - waiting on <0x42804a68> (a aaf)
  at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:364)
  at aaf.a(:com.google.android.gms.DynamiteModulesC:75)
  at zq.onTrimMemory(:com.google.android.gms.DynamiteModulesC:1187)
  at android.app.Application.onTrimMemory(Application.java:148)
  at com.xxx.nub.NubApplication.onTrimMemory(NubApplication.java:211)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.handleTrimMemory(ActivityThread.java:4298)
  at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1481)
  at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102)
  at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:146)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5487)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:515)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1283)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1099)
  at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

The problem occurs on a phone running KitKat. The problem does not occur on a phone running Lollipop.

The complete logcat output can be viewed here.

Answer 1

The background_crash process is created by Firebase Crash Reporting. That's why you're seeing the duplicate messages, but I don't think its the root cause here. I'm going to file the hang as an issue upstream with the Google Play services team, but there is probably a workaround you can use in the mean time:

Because you're specifying com.google.android.gms:play-services:9.0.0 as a dependency you're bringing in literally all of Google Play services - which is a lot!

I would recommend replacing that line with the specific dependencies you need. You can find a full list here. As an example, if you're using Maps and Google Sign In, you might specify:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-auth:9.0.0'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:9.0.0'