Android Studio 3.0 Execution failed for task: unable to merge dex

Question

android studio was getting build error while build execution with following:

Error:Execution failed for task \':app:transformDexArchiveWithExternalLi

Answer 1

For me, adding

multiDexEnabled true

and

packagingOptions {
        exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE' 
        exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
        exclude 'META-INF/notice'
        exclude 'META-INF/notice.txt'
        exclude 'META-INF/license'
        exclude 'META-INF/license.txt'
    }

into the app level Build.gradle file solved the issue

Answer 2

I tried many solutions as mentioned above including the multiDexEnabled true but none of that worked for me.

Here is the solution which worked for me - copy this code in app\build.gradle file

configurations.all {
    resolutionStrategy.eachDependency { DependencyResolveDetails details ->
        def requested = details.requested
        if (requested.group == 'com.android.support' && requested.name != 'multidex') {
            details.useVersion "${rootProject.ext.supportLibVersion}"
        }
    }
}

Make sure to run gradlew clean before running the code