Failure to install APK [INSTALL_FAILED_DEXOPT] Android Studio

Question

I have tried literally everything to try and rectify this error when trying to deploy an app to an actual android device for debugging but have been unable to solve the matter. Everytime I try to launch I get a failed [INSTALL_FAILED_DEXOPT] error and when checking the logcat it is always because there is no classes.dex in my debug apk.

If I run gradlew.bat clean assembleDebug, there is no difference in the apk size so I'm assuming there is a build error in android studio. I am using android studio beta 0.86 and have tried it on 0.89 with the same result. I have tried build tools for 19.1 to 21 with no result. I have also tried different devices and created a new project (that has never been installed on my devices) and android studio seems to think it needs to be uninstalled first when attempting to deploy.

I have tried switching my device to ART, uninstalling and reinstalling android studio, redownloading the sdk and restarting my computer. NOTHING and I mean NOTHING has worked. I think the problem started after I downloaded the lollipop apis but am not sure. I have tried uninstalling all apps with my package signature on my device but NOTHING works! Not even Project -> Clean Project -> Rebuild

This is extremely frustrating as I cannot debug my apps anymore :/ has anyone had any experience with this error or ways to rectify it?

Answer 1

So turns out that the issue was mismatching sdks between Android Studio and the Project. The project was using an old sdk and once I made them the same, I cleaned and rebuilt the project and everything was good to go.

UPDATE:

I ran into the problem again after I tried to update my SDK and its tools. Turns out that when you try to do this, the SDK locks the tools folder and then you get an error saying some file couldn't be overridden. When this happened to me, all the build tools were deleted so there were errors in the .dex file created when debuggin my app.

Answer 2

We are using android 2.2 (really old i know) and couldn't find a fix for this error. Eventually we found this bug https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/30900/. The only solution for us was to remove some libraries...