Identifying errors in Release build of Android application

Question

I've recently started studying the build flavors of the Android application and the Proguard. So what I'm doing now is creating a release build of my application. For this, following are the changes I've made in buildTypes of my build.gradle file.

buildTypes {
    debug {
        minifyEnabled false
        proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt')
    }
    release {
        minifyEnabled true
        zipAlignEnabled true
        proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        signingConfig signingConfigs.chitchatReleaseConfig
    }
}

I've created a proguard-rules.pro file for the release build by referring the following link as mentioned at various places.

https://www.guardsquare.com/en/proguard/manual/examples

However, I'm still confused as to what types of files in my project apart from the general files I should actually include in the proguard-rules.pro. Because obviously due to the release build, at certain points in my app, I keep getting the FileNotFoundException and I'm not able to debug it.

So how do I decide what files in my project I should include in my proguard-rules.pro and how do I debug FileNotFoundException in my app in the release build?

Answer 1

Proguard comes with certain problems but it works great for minifying the apk size and code obfuscation. I will suggest that if you are using third party libraries in your app then use their proguard-rules as well in proguard-rules file.

To get error from signed apk use Firebase Crashlytic. Its easy to integrate(10 minute max) and it will show the complete stacktrace of exception on your firebase console .