Trying to add MultiDex support - cannot find symbol context and MultiDex

Question

After following the instructions mentioned at: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html#mdex-gradle

I am getting an error cannot find symbol

Answer 1

The reason you are having this "symbol not found" issue is because you haven't imported the required imports. Why not simply add the following imports

import android.support.multidex.MultiDex;

import android.content.Context;

You should know the different cases for using each Multidex option. Kindly refer to https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex#java for all information relating to MultiDexing

Answer 2

Thanks to @Gabe Sechan for the help. I know React Native/JavaScript, kind of clueless about Android/Java, so I simply followed the instructions at https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html#mdex-gradle, which did not mention any additional imports. I learned to look up the package I needed here: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/multidex/MultiDexApplication.html. After adding:

import android.support.multidex.MultiDexApplication;

public class MainApplication extends MultiDexApplication implements ReactApplication {
...

App seems to build and run successfully on Android 4.4.4+ devices. On my Samsung Galaxy S3 simulator running 4.3 however, I am getting a crash upon app start: What does WIN DEATH: android.osDeadObjectException mean?, which seems like another issue altogether.

Answer 3

For those who get cannot find symbol error, the following is stated in the official android developer documents:

If your minSdkVersion is 21 or higher multidex is enabled by default, and you do not need the multidex support library.

Answer 4

If you are using RN > 0.60 and androidx support, you may add,

import androidx.multidex.MultiDex;