Explain R8's shrinking, obfuscation, and optimization phases and how to influence optimization
WHAT IT TESTS: Whether you understand R8 beyond a black box. ANSWER OUTLINE: Separate dead code removal, renaming, and bytecode transformation; cite ProGuard keep rules and selective passes. RED FLAG: Thinking optimization is only the minifyEnabled toggle.
WHAT IT TESTS: Whether you understand R8 as more than a black box and can tune the Android build pipeline. ANSWER OUTLINE: Distinguish shrinking, which removes unused code, from obfuscation, which renames identifiers, and optimization, which transforms bytecode via inlining. Then explain how ProGuard keep rules and selective passes let developers influence the optimizer beyond the minifyEnabled toggle. RED FLAG: Believing optimization is only a binary flag with no strategy for debugging missing classes at runtime.
Read the original → developer.android.com
- #android
- #r8
- #build-system
- #proguard
- #bytecode-optimization
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