How to turn off only the obfuscation in Android R8?

Question

I use Android Studio 3.3 Canary 5, Gradle 4.9, gradle plugin 3.3.0-alpha05

minifyEnabled true
useProguard false
proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'

Does't work.

---

Edit:

@JakeWharton: "You use ProGuard configurations for this, not a Gradle DSL. Disable shrinking with -dontshrink, disable obfuscation with -dontobfuscate, and disable optimization with -dontoptimize."

TLDL

proguard-rules.pro

-dontshrink
-dontobfuscate
-dontoptimize

Perfunctory

Answer 1

Following this answer, I was able to solve this issue. Instead of editing the build.gradle file, I added -dontobfuscate to the proguard-rules.pro file. (You can configure a different proguard rules file for debug and release builds.) This skipped the obfuscation step and allowed me to make shrink'd debug builds with R8.

Hosier

From the link: @JakeWharton: "You use ProGuard configurations for this, not a Gradle DSL. Disable shrinking with -dontshrink, disable obfuscation with -dontobfuscate, and disable optimization with -dontoptimize." – Perfunctory

We shouldn't use gradle.properties for this? – Highfalutin

Answer 2

In your gradle.properties file, add this line

 android.enableR8=false

This worked for me.

Grogshop

useProguard will soon be deprecated, any idea how we could fix this issue ? #57736608 without disabling R8? – Pane

This isn't deprecated? – Highfalutin

This turns off R8 completely, both obfuscation and shrinking. – Niobous

This is now removed in Android Gradle Plugin 7.0 – Submediant

Answer 3

build.gradle

buildTypes {
    release {
        shrinkResources false
        minifyEnabled true // R8 or ProGuard will be enabled.
        proguardFiles 'proguard-rules.pro'
    }
    debug {
        shrinkResources false
        minifyEnabled false // R8 or ProGuard will be disabled.
    }
}

This answer does not demonstrate how to disable obfuscation within R8. It instead shows how to disable obfuscation at the build level.

I found setting minifyEnabled to false in build.gradle disables R8 and thus removes obfuscation. Obligatory reminder: Be cautious disabling obfuscation as it will mean the source will not be cloaked whatsoever.

Hilar

This not answer the question "How to turn off only the obfuscation in Android R8?" Seems to me an AI nonsense comment – Perfunctory

@Perfunctory This isn't an AI generated answer. I came across this question when trying to figure out how to disable obfuscation. However, I understand that my answer isn't directly related to the question so I'll edit it to reflect that. – Hilar