Butterknife 8.4.0 does not find views after re-running the app. It gets a NullPointerException

Question

After re-running the app in Android Studio Butterknife.bind(this) does not find the views anymore. The only reliable solution I found so far is by Cleaning/Rebuilding Project and run it again. Then it finds the views again until the next re-run. This is incredibly annoying so far and takes a minimum of two minutes for a rebuild.

I have the following build.gradle

android {

compileSdkVersion 24
buildToolsVersion "25.0.0"
defaultConfig {
    applicationId "xx"
    minSdkVersion 21
    targetSdkVersion 24
    versionCode x
    versionName "xxx"
    testInstrumentationRunner "android.support.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    jackOptions {
        enabled true
    }
}
buildTypes {
    release {
        minifyEnabled false
        proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'

    }
}
packagingOptions {
    exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE' 
    exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE' 
}
compileOptions {
    sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
}
}

dependencies {
    annotationProcessor 'com.jakewharton:butterknife-compiler:8.4.0'
    compile 'com.jakewharton:butterknife:8.4.0'
    androidTestCompile 'com.android.support.test.espresso:espresso-core:2.2.2'
    androidTestCompile 'com.android.support.test:runner:0.5'
    androidTestCompile 'com.android.support:support-annotations:24.2.1'
    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:24.2.1'
    compile 'com.android.support:design:24.2.1'
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v13:24.2.1'
    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:24.2.1'
    compile 'com.android.support.test.espresso:espresso-idling-resource:2.2.2'

}

I am also using build tools com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.2.2

With Butterknife.setDebug(true) I get the following:

D/ButterKnife: Looking up binding for xx.LoginFragment
D/ButterKnife: Not found. Trying superclass xx.BaseFragment
D/ButterKnife: Not found. Trying superclass android.app.Fragment
D/ButterKnife: MISS: Reached framework class. Abandoning search.

The BaseFragment does the binding and LoginFragment extends it. It looks like this

BaseFragment import android.app.Fragment;

 @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
                             Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        View v = inflater.inflate(getLayoutResourceId(), container, false);
        ButterKnife.setDebug(true);
        unbinder = ButterKnife.bind(this, v);
        initViews(v);
        return v;
    }

---

LoginFragment

@BindView(R.id.inputEmail)
    protected EditText inputEmail;

@Override
    protected void initViews(View v) {
        EditTextFocusListener focusListener = new EditTextFocusListener();
        inputEmail.setOnFocusChangeListener(focusListener);
    }

And the stacktrace

  Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'void android.widget.EditText.setOnFocusChangeListener(android.view.View$OnFocusChangeListener)' on a null object reference
            at xx.LoginFragment.initViews(LoginFragment.java:51)
            at xx.BaseFragment.onCreateView(BaseFragment.java:53)

As I said before the only solution which is reliable at the moment is to do a full clean/rebuild of the whole project. This exact structure worked fine before using the jackCompiler and I can not disable it anymore. Major part of the code depends on it.

Answer 1

This is a temporary solution until someone has a better answer or it's released on the stable channel.

I changed to the canary channel and upgraded Android Studio to 2.3 Canary and com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.3.0-alpha1. Everything else stays the same as in the opening post.

EDIT: I ultimately decided to disable the jackCompiler and roll back to Java 1.7. It's stable now.

jackOptions {
        enabled false
    }