React native app crashing after enabling R8 / minifyEnabled

Question

My react native app is crashing after enabling R8 by making the following changes in app/build.gradle.

The build is successful but the app crashes on the run-time.

Here's the code:

Answer 1

It took me days to debug this issue, so I wanted to write the solution that worked for me. I was trying to fix the issue by adding the rules in proguard-rules.pro file for the packages that I was using but the main issue was in app/build.gradle file only.

The issues are simple ones but were hard to get. Here are the issues:

1. By default react-native run-android builds the apk in debug mode but R8 obfuscation doesn’t work in debug mode.
2. debuggable true -> My app started working fine after making debuggable false
3. issue with the packages -> There are multiple packages that are responsible for the app crash for eg. Firebase. So, for that, you need to check through all your packages and add the rules that are required by proguard-rules.pro.