Strings remain in the release APK since 0.4.0

[mxkmn]

I don't understand what happened, but now R8 (proguard-android-optimize.txt config) doesn't remove strings from the release APK.

I don't call log.dispatcher.install. But on version 0.3.0 the strings are not stored in release optimized APK, but on version 0.4.0 and above they are.

I checked the changes, but didn't find anything odd. Could you please help me @twyatt? The only meaningful change I see is a change in Kotlin version.

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To reproduce this bug, just add some logs without installing a logger. When building the APK, enable R8 as shown below:

release {
	isMinifyEnabled = true
	isShrinkResources = true
	proguardFiles(getDefaultProguardFile("proguard-android-optimize.txt"))
}

Next, build the release APK, unzip it to .smali with APKTool and try to find the logged string.

[twyatt]

What strings are you referring to?

[mxkmn]

Some debug logs like "Trying to get data from $url" or "Sync failed"

[twyatt]

Oh, like strings within the log lambda?

Log.info { "Example" }

[mxkmn]

Yeah

My logger module

Usage example

[twyatt]

My guess is that your wrapped function takes message as a string rather than a lazily executed lambda.
That is the primary reason message is a lambda in Khronicle, so that it doesn't need to be executed unless it will actually be logged (potentially avoiding the cost of string building).
I don't know the inner workings of R8 but that's my first guess as to why you're seeing strings you don't expect in your release APK.
If you change your wrapper log function to have message be a lambda, does it produce the output you expected in the APK?
Not sure why behavior would've changed between Khronicle 0.3.0 and 0.4.0; AGP version was upgraded, which might affect R8 behavior. 🤷

[mxkmn]

I have latest agp = "8.8.2" in my project, so I don't think it's a problem.

It is valid that a direct call to the library Log.info { “Example” } is correctly destroyed when using R8, thank you for pointing that out. The problem is inside my layering.

I reserached the problem all day today, and couldn't figure out how to make my layer compatible with newer versions of the libraries. If you have any ideas - would appreciate them, I will continue to test…