Android studio "MethodHandle.invoke and MethodHandle.invokeExact are only supported starting with Android O (--min-api 26)" error when building APK

Question

I am developing an Android application(in Android Studio which I am pretty new to) with many imported external .jar's, the development in the emulator went smoothly but when I started building the APK, I got the following errors:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':app:desugarDebugFileDependencies'.
> A failure occurred while executing com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks.Workers$ActionFacade
   > Error while dexing.

Error: C:\Users\Daniel Alves Rosel\.gradle\caches\transforms-2\files-2.1\514725b031c9b95dac9cf3e9a193720c\jetified-jetty-util-9.4.31.v20200723.jar:org/eclipse/jetty/util/ModuleLocation.class, java.net.URI org.eclipse.jetty.util.ModuleLocation.getModuleLocation(java.lang.Class), MethodHandle.invoke and MethodHandle.invokeExact are only supported starting with Android O (--min-api 26)
Stack trace:
com.android.tools.r8.errors.a: MethodHandle.invoke and MethodHandle.invokeExact are only supported starting with Android O (--min-api 26)
    at com.android.tools.r8.errors.a.a(:7)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.b(:58)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.a(:104)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.a(:53)
    at com.android.tools.r8.graph.C.b(:43)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.b(:35)
    at com.android.tools.r8.utils.U0.a(:10)
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.TrustedListenableFutureTask$TrustedFutureInterruptibleTask.runInterruptibly(TrustedListenableFutureTask.java:125)
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.InterruptibleTask.run(InterruptibleTask.java:69)
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.TrustedListenableFutureTask.run(TrustedListenableFutureTask.java:78)
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.MoreExecutors$DirectExecutorService.execute(MoreExecutors.java:322)
    at java.util.concurrent.AbstractExecutorService.submit(AbstractExecutorService.java:134)
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.AbstractListeningExecutorService.submit(AbstractListeningExecutorService.java:66)
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.AbstractListeningExecutorService.submit(AbstractListeningExecutorService.java:36)
    at com.android.tools.r8.utils.U0.a(:3)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.a(:10)
    at com.android.tools.r8.D8.d(:29)
    at com.android.tools.r8.D8.b(:1)
    at com.android.tools.r8.utils.W.a(:30)
    at com.android.tools.r8.D8.run(:11)
    at com.android.builder.dexing.D8DexArchiveBuilder.convert(D8DexArchiveBuilder.java:116)
    at com.android.builder.dexing.DexArchiveBuilder.convert$default(DexArchiveBuilder.kt:46)
    at com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks.DexFileDependenciesTask$DexFileDependenciesWorkerAction.run(DexFileDependenciesTask.kt:153)
    at com.android.build.gradle.internal.tasks.Workers$ActionFacade.run(Workers.kt:242)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.AdapterWorkAction.execute(AdapterWorkAction.java:50)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.DefaultWorkerServer.execute(DefaultWorkerServer.java:50)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.NoIsolationWorkerFactory$1$1.create(NoIsolationWorkerFactory.java:63)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.NoIsolationWorkerFactory$1$1.create(NoIsolationWorkerFactory.java:59)
    at org.gradle.internal.classloader.ClassLoaderUtils.executeInClassloader(ClassLoaderUtils.java:98)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.NoIsolationWorkerFactory$1.lambda$execute$0(NoIsolationWorkerFactory.java:59)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.AbstractWorker$1.call(AbstractWorker.java:44)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.AbstractWorker$1.call(AbstractWorker.java:41)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DefaultBuildOperationExecutor$CallableBuildOperationWorker.execute(DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.java:416)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DefaultBuildOperationExecutor$CallableBuildOperationWorker.execute(DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.java:406)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DefaultBuildOperationExecutor$1.execute(DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.java:165)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.execute(DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.java:250)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.execute(DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.java:158)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.call(DefaultBuildOperationExecutor.java:102)
    at org.gradle.internal.operations.DelegatingBuildOperationExecutor.call(DelegatingBuildOperationExecutor.java:36)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.AbstractWorker.executeWrappedInBuildOperation(AbstractWorker.java:41)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.NoIsolationWorkerFactory$1.execute(NoIsolationWorkerFactory.java:53)
    at org.gradle.workers.internal.DefaultWorkerExecutor.lambda$submitWork$2(DefaultWorkerExecutor.java:200)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
    at org.gradle.internal.work.DefaultConditionalExecutionQueue$ExecutionRunner.runExecution(DefaultConditionalExecutionQueue.java:215)
    at org.gradle.internal.work.DefaultConditionalExecutionQueue$ExecutionRunner.runBatch(DefaultConditionalExecutionQueue.java:164)
    at org.gradle.internal.work.DefaultConditionalExecutionQueue$ExecutionRunner.run(DefaultConditionalExecutionQueue.java:131)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ExecutorPolicy$CatchAndRecordFailures.onExecute(ExecutorPolicy.java:64)
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ManagedExecutorImpl$1.run(ManagedExecutorImpl.java:48)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ThreadFactoryImpl$ManagedThreadRunnable.run(ThreadFactoryImpl.java:56)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
    Suppressed: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: com.android.tools.r8.errors.a: MethodHandle.invoke and MethodHandle.invokeExact are only supported starting with Android O (--min-api 26)
        at com.google.common.util.concurrent.AbstractFuture.getDoneValue(AbstractFuture.java:552)
        at com.google.common.util.concurrent.AbstractFuture.get(AbstractFuture.java:513)
        at com.google.common.util.concurrent.FluentFuture$TrustedFuture.get(FluentFuture.java:86)
        at com.android.tools.r8.utils.U0.a(:14)
        at com.android.tools.r8.utils.U0.a(:9)
        ... 39 more
    [CIRCULAR REFERENCE:com.android.tools.r8.errors.a: MethodHandle.invoke and MethodHandle.invokeExact are only supported starting with Android O (--min-api 26)]
Caused by: com.android.tools.r8.a: MethodHandle.invoke and MethodHandle.invokeExact are only supported starting with Android O (--min-api 26)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.N.a(:633)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.N.a(:674)
    at com.android.tools.r8.r.n.A.a(:236)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.o.a(:153)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.N.a(:133)
    at com.android.tools.r8.graph.l.a(:93)
    at com.android.tools.r8.graph.l.a(:71)
    at com.android.tools.r8.graph.l.buildIR(:1)
    at com.android.tools.r8.graph.C0.buildIR(:1)
    at com.android.tools.r8.graph.T.a(:152)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.a(:412)
    at com.android.tools.r8.ir.conversion.O.b(:53)
    ... 52 more

I have tried adding the following to my build.gradle; without any success.

    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }

I tried changing the Java version that runs on my system from 15 => 8, because I saw a post suggesting that the version java -version should be equal to sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8

When I run gradlew :app:dependencies (suggested in [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63612606/com-android-tools-r8-errors-a-methodhandle-invoke-and-methodhandle-invokeexact] to find a jar which is causing a problem), I get:

* What went wrong:
Could not initialize class org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.InvokerHelper

adding:

allprojects {
    configurations.all {
        resolutionStrategy.force 'org.objenesis:objenesis:2.6'
    }
}

at the end of build.gradle hasn't done anything either.

Here is my build.gradle:

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'


buildscript {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath "com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.1"

        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files
    }
}

android {
    packagingOptions {
        exclude 'META-INF/DEPENDENCIES'
    }
    compileSdkVersion 30
    buildToolsVersion "30.0.2"

    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.borg.borg2"
        minSdkVersion 23
        targetSdkVersion 30
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"

        testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    }

    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation fileTree(dir: "libs", include: ["*.jar"])
    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.2.0'
    implementation 'androidx.constraintlayout:constraintlayout:2.0.2'
    implementation files('C:\\Users\\Daniel Alves Rosel\\Documents\\Invoy\\Projects\\BORG\\nodes\\node-api-tunnel-v9.jar')
    implementation fileTree(dir: 'C:\\Users\\Daniel Alves Rosel\\Documents\\Invoy\\Projects\\BORG\\dependencies\\dependencies_package', include: ['*.aar', '*.jar'], exclude: [])
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.12'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.ext:junit:1.1.2'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.3.0'

}
allprojects {
    configurations.all {
        resolutionStrategy.force 'org.objenesis:objenesis:2.6'
    }
}

Answer 1

Just change **minsdkVersion to 26**

Answer 2

One of the libraries that you use is using Java features which are only supported on Android from API level 26. As there are no desugaring/backporting of these features the compilation fails if the minSdkVersion is below 26. Allowing these language features on lower API levels is tracked in issue 174733673.

The reason that this works when testing from Android Studio is that Android Studio will instruct AGP to build with an API level matching the device used for testing for the optimal debugging experience. When the final project is built the API level set in build.gradle will take effect with this compilation error as the result.

Besides removing use of the offending library (which seems to be jetty-util-9.4.31.v20200723.jar) there is one other thing you can try, and that is to shrink your app as described in Shrink, obfuscate, and optimize your app. This assumes that the offending code will actually be dead code at runtime and removed by shrinking.