com.android.build.transform.api.TransformException

Question

Try adding multiDexEnabled true to your app build.gradle file.

 defaultConfig {
    multiDexEnabled true
}

EDIT:

Try Steve's answer first. In case it happens frequently or first step didn't help multiDexEnabled might help. For those who love to dig deeper here is couple similar issues (with more answers):

:app:dexDebug ExecException finished with non-zero exit value 2

Error:Execution failed for task ':app:dexDebug'. com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException

Another thing to watch for, is that you don't use

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:8.3.0'

That will import ALL the play services, and it'll only take little more than a hello world to exceed the 65535 method limit of a single dex APK.

Always specify only the services you need, for instance:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-identity:8.3.0'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-plus:8.3.0'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-gcm:8.3.0'

I just had to Clean my project and then it built successfully afterwards.

This error began appearing for me when I added some new methods to my project. I knew that I was nowhere near the 65k method limit and did not want to enable multiDex support for my project if I could help it.

I resolved it by increasing the memory available to the :app:transformClassesForDexForDebug task. I did this by specifying javaMaxHeapSize in gradle.build.

gradle.build

android {
    ...
    dexOptions {
        javaMaxHeapSize "4g" //specify the heap size for the dex process
    }
}

I tried this after having had no success with other common solutions to this problem:

• Running a project clean
• Manually deleting the /app/build and /build directories from my project
• Invalidating Gradle Cache and restarting Android Studio

Error

Error:Execution failed for task > ':app:transformClassesWithDexForDebug'. com.android.build.api.transform.TransformException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: org.gradle.process.internal.ExecException: Process 'command '/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java'' finished with non-zero exit value 1

Note: increasing the memory available to the DEX task can cause performance problems on systems with lower memory - link.

I also faced similar issue in Android Studio 1.5.1 and gradle 1.5.0. I just have to remove unwanted libraries from dependencies which may be automatically added in my app's build.gradle file. One was : compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:8.4.0'. So for best practices try to only include specific play services library like for ads include only

dependencies {
    compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-ads:8.4.0'
}

Although

defaultConfig {
    multiDexEnabled true
}

this will also solve the issue, but provides with a lot of Notes in gradle console, making it confusing to find the other real issues during build

you can see the documentation of Android

android {
    compileSdkVersion 21
    buildToolsVersion "21.1.0"

    defaultConfig {
        ...
        minSdkVersion 14
        targetSdkVersion 21
        ...

        // Enabling multidex support.
        multiDexEnabled true
    }
    ...
}

dependencies {
  compile 'com.android.support:multidex:1.0.0'
}

Manifest.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    package="com.example.android.multidex.myapplication">
    <application
        ...
        android:name="android.support.multidex.MultiDexApplication">
        ...
    </application>
</manifest>

I'm using AS 1.5.1 and encountered the same problem. But just cleaning the project just wont do, so I tried something.

• clean project
• restart AS
• Sync Project

This worked with me, so I hope this helps.