Proguard ParseException: "Expecting keyword 'allowshrinking', 'allowoptimization', or 'allowobfuscation' before 'includedescriptorclasses"' on -Keep

Question

Weird error that only pops up when running the Proguard step from Android Studio

The error:

org.gradle.internal.UncheckedException: proguard.ParseException: Expecting keyword 'allowshrinking', 'allowoptimization', or 'allowobfuscation' before 'includedescriptorclasses' in line 42 of file...

Here is the line in question in my Proguard file:

-keep, includedescriptorclasses public class com.Foo.Bar { public protected <fields>; public protected <methods>; public protected *; }

Noting that:

-keep,allowobfuscations, allowoptimizations, allowshrinking, includedescriptorclasses public class com.Foo.Bar { public protected <fields>; public protected <methods>; public protected *; }

Or any combination of keep modifiers still results in the same error message.

Answer 1

The option includedescriptorclasses is new in ProGuard 5.0. You are probably using an older version. The versions are all backward compatible, so you can just change the ProGuard jar.