minifyEnabled causing app to crash on release mode

Question

My application was working fine on Debug mode. Unfortunately after uploading to Google Play Store I found that the app is crashing. I searched several similar questions all of which suggested to disable Proguard or check the Log outputs. However I have come across the following cases when using the release Build Variant:

1- In normal case when minifyEnabled is true the app crashes and I am not able to see any Log outputs. There are No Debuggable Processes.

release {
            shrinkResources true
            minifyEnabled true
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
            signingConfig signingConfigs.config
        }

2- Making debuggable true my app works fine. But again I am not able to see any error Logs because the app is working fine.

release {
            debuggable true
            shrinkResources true
            minifyEnabled true
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
            signingConfig signingConfigs.config
        }

3- Commenting minifyEnabled true the app works. But I lose minification benefits.

release {
            shrinkResources true
            //minifyEnabled true
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
            signingConfig signingConfigs.config
        }

Also tried hardcoding android:debuggable="true" in AndroidManifest.XML which gives error.

The strange thing is that by setting debuggable to true the app works fine. I am not sure whether I should keep debuggable true in the release mode or disable minification, Or any other workaround to tackle this issue.

I will be very grateful if anyone could share how to solve this problem.

UPDATE: by running Android Device Monitor I was able to find the problem:

01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806): Process: com.example.myapp, PID: 4806
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806): java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'void android.support.v7.widget.SearchView.setSearchableInfo(android.app.SearchableInfo)' on a null object reference
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at com.example.myapp.MainActivity.onCreateOptionsMenu(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.app.Activity.onCreatePanelMenu(Activity.java:3142)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.support.v4.b.n.onCreatePanelMenu(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.support.v7.view.i.onCreatePanelMenu(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.support.v7.app.h$b.onCreatePanelMenu(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.support.v7.view.i.onCreatePanelMenu(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.support.v7.app.q.j(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.support.v7.app.q$1.run(Unknown Source)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:739)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:148)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:7329)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1230)
01-28 00:28:13.764: E/AndroidRuntime(4806):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1120)

Answer 1

Looks like Proguard wasn't able to handle the SearchView widget properly. I added the following line to proguard-rules.pro file located inside app folder and the problem disappeared:

-keep class android.support.v7.widget.SearchView { *; }

Now I don't need to set minifyEnabled to false.

UPDATE:

For those who still aren't able to see the error logs in the android studio or reproduce the crashes on release builds, they can use an online crash reporting tool.