Identifying and Handling Android Build Memory Issues
Article Summary
Doni Winata from Traveloka's Android Infra team reveals why constantly increasing Gradle's heap size actually makes your build problems worse. His deep dive into Android build memory issues shows how to stop fighting symptoms and fix root causes.
As Android projects grow, out-of-memory errors become inevitable. Most developers respond by cranking up the -xmx heap size, but this often leads to frozen machines and slower builds. Winata shares Traveloka's systematic approach to profiling, identifying, and resolving memory issues using VisualVM, heap dumps, and GC analysis.
Key Takeaways
- Multiple daemon instances can waste gigabytes: sync JDK paths between Android Studio and terminal
- Parceler library leak held 2GB of objects, causing 3m9s of GC time versus 1m39s after fix
- Dagger memory leak accumulated 3.5GB across 5 builds, eventually causing OOM failures
- VisualGC plugin reveals exactly which tasks trigger excessive garbage collection during builds
- Forked daemons reduce main daemon overhead but require careful worker configuration to avoid memory bloat
Critical Insight
Profiling with VisualVM and heap dumps helped Traveloka cut GC time by 48% and identify library-specific memory leaks that no amount of heap size increases could solve.
