This article is written by Nihal Aghazada
Overcoming problems related to Java Heap Space while building Android projects can be quite difficult and frustrating. Understanding the concept of mass memory in Java is crucial, as is being aware of the available solutions.
This article will provide a brief explanation of the reasons behind the appearance of the Java Heap Space problem and present Codemagic’s recommended solutions to address it.
A Java Heap Space error can block your releases
I recently added some gradle tasks to my Android project, which filled the project with memory-hungry gradle tasks, e.g. DexGuard and ProGuardthis ended up requiring more mass memory and the machine fell short of providing it. To put more context into it, when performing tasks, it either exited Daemon closing it prematurely or throwing java.lang.OutOfMemoryError :
ERROR:: R8: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.
* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':app:minifyReleaseWithR8'.
> com.android.tools.r8.CompilationFailedException: Compilation failed to complete
During the construction of the project, I unexpectedly found that running DexGuard required a significantly larger amount of memory than some machines could manage. This has already affected the release pipelines that needed to be tested and deployed to the Google Play Store.
The limitation does not specifically apply only to DexGuard or ProGuard, but all other gradle tasks could limit build pipelines by requiring more memory. There are some suggestions to solve the problem:
-
Consider upgrading the gradle-wrapper.properties file to the latest version of Gradle and the android/build.gradle file to the latest version of the Android Gradle plugin as this may resolve the issue. However, working with their Java version compatibility can be difficult, remembering that projects do not support the latest versions of Gradle and AGP.
-
Increasing the -Xmx heap size without confirmation of sufficient available memory of the machine is uncertain. If the assigned mass size exceeds the capacity of the machine, the value will be ignored.
Codemagic to the rescue
Codemagic as a CI/CD platform did the team a huge favor by speeding up workflow pipelines along with automatically running tests, creating builds and publishing team apps on the Play Store, in addition to addressing the Java Heap Space issue. Codemagic’s robust machines have made building, testing and publishing not only Android but iOS apps incredibly easy. Struggles with not only the Java Heap Space error but also other related problems can be alleviated with the powerful tools provided by Codemagic:
- macOS with Apple M2, M2 Pro, Max and Ultra chips
- Linux with arm64 and x64 architectures
- Windows
Conclusion
Get in touch here if your Android builds are affected by an OOM (out of memory) error or similar issues, and you’re interested in trying one of these machines with extended specs.
