Flutter project exceeds .dex Method Reference Count limit

Question

Why does a Flutter project exceed 64K method reference in its .dex file?

I am wondering what the cause of this could be:
In a rather small Flutter project I use 13 plugins. Without Multidex, the Android build fails because it vastly exceeds the method reference limit.

Is there any trick (e.g. Gradle related) that would allow to shrink the method reference count because I think that such a project should not exceed the limit?
(if you want further information on why I think that this is odd, please take a look at older revisions of this question)

Answer 1

I had the same problem and the fix for me was increasing the minSdkVersion in the app/build.bradle like this

defaultConfig {         // TODO: Specify your own unique Application ID (https://developer.android.com/studio/build/application-id.html).         minSdkVersion 21 // change this to 21         targetSdkVersion 28         versionCode flutterVersionCode.toInteger()         versionName flutterVersionName         testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"     }