How do you adjust jvm args for dex memory in gradle?

Question

I have an Android project which is currently running out of heap space during the dex step:

 :app:dexXXXXX Exception in thread "pool-1-thread-4"  java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

I would like to bump up the jvm min/max settings in gradle like we used to do with the Maven plugin:

      <groupId>com.jayway.maven.plugins.android.generation2</groupId>
      <artifactId>android-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.6.0</version>
      <extensions>true</extensions>
      <configuration>
        <sdk>
          <platform>${android.platform}</platform>
        </sdk>
        <undeployBeforeDeploy>true</undeployBeforeDeploy>
        <dex>
          <jvmArguments>
              <jvmArgument>-Xms1024m</jvmArgument>
              <jvmArgument>-Xmx2048m</jvmArgument>
          </jvmArguments>
        </dex>

But in the docs for the android plugin in gradle I only see these options:

   android {
    dexOptions {
        incremental false
        preDexLibraries = false
        jumboMode = false
    }
   }

Is there a way to do it? There is a gradle.properties file but that just seems to have jvmargs for gradle itself.

Answer 1

There is an undocumented dexOptions flag.

dexOptions { javaMaxHeapSize "2g" }

I found the flag from a google groups post. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/adt-dev/P_TLBTyFWVY