Oh I forgot to mention that I thought it might be connected to this issue: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/243778589. But after trying 2.5.2 I can say that the issue persists.

Please provide a minimal sample project along with the minimal steps to recreate the issue in the project.

Sorry for the delay. I got a working example here: https://github.com/Del-S/issues. The project is set up to crash when navigating to ThirdFragment (nested nav graph) with poping the graph.

I poked into it a little bit and it seems to be connected to SafeArgs gradle plugin. When safe args is used to navigate to ThirdFragment (with nested graph poped) it will try to recreate te parent but there were no arguments passed so it crashes.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate from Second Fragment to Child nav graph (with non-nullable parameters).
2. Navigate to Third fragment using SafeArgs and the app crashes.

Crash log:

Process: cz.dels.issues, PID: 1743
java.lang.NullPointerException: null cannot be cast to non-null type kotlin.Long
at androidx.navigation.NavType$Companion$LongType$1.get(NavType.kt:352)
at androidx.navigation.NavType$Companion$LongType$1.get(NavType.kt:342)
at androidx.navigation.NavArgument.verify(NavArgument.kt:76)
at androidx.navigation.NavDestination.addInDefaultArgs(NavDestination.kt:502)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.addEntryToBackStack(NavController.kt:1865)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.addEntryToBackStack$default(NavController.kt:1813)
at androidx.navigation.NavController$navigate$4.invoke(NavController.kt:1721)
at androidx.navigation.NavController$navigate$4.invoke(NavController.kt:1719)
at androidx.navigation.NavController$NavControllerNavigatorState.push(NavController.kt:287)
at androidx.navigation.fragment.FragmentNavigator.navigate(FragmentNavigator.kt:246)
at androidx.navigation.fragment.FragmentNavigator.navigate(FragmentNavigator.kt:162)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.navigateInternal(NavController.kt:260)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.navigate(NavController.kt:1719)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.navigate(NavController.kt:1545)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.navigate(NavController.kt:1472)
at androidx.navigation.NavController.navigate(NavController.kt:1930)
at cz.dels.issues.SecondFragment.onViewCreated$lambda-0(SecondFragment.kt:38)
at cz.dels.issues.SecondFragment.$r8$lambda$XDYnOS_cYrafiNQ5rcCu1WCn0IE(Unknown Source:0)
at cz.dels.issues.SecondFragment$$ExternalSyntheticLambda0.onClick(Unknown Source:2)

Note: If in step 2 SaveArgs is not used then navigation works correctly. More information is here: https://github.com/Del-S/issues/blob/master/app/src/main/java/cz/dels/issues/SecondFragment.kt#L37.

Ups a typo: Navigate from Second First Fragment to Child nav graph (with non-nullable parameters).

Note: sorry for the spam but I am not able to edit my own comment.

This has been fixed and will be available in navigation 2.6.0-alpha08

I wouldn't say this is fixed. If you add a back-callback in the activity which is lifecycle aware, and then background->foreground the app, the activity back-callback will be put on top of the callback pile. This leads to that any BackHandler in your composable will NOT be triggered.

The best workaround I have for now is to use the non-lifecycle aware function in the activity.

class MainActivity : FragmentActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        
        // open fragment which hoists the composables
        ...

        if (savedInstanceState == null) {
             onBackPressedDispatcher.addCallback(onBackPressedCallback = someBackHandling())  
            // onBackPressedDispatcher.addCallback(owner = this, onBackPressedCallback = someBackHandling)  // not this one
        }
    }

https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/navigation#2.7.0-beta01 :

Bug Fixes : NavHost in Navigation Compose now correctly intercepts system back calls even after the Activity has been STOPPED and RESUMED.

It works fine for me.

Re comment#14 - please file a new issue with a project that reproduces your problem.

Note that you should never, ever be calling navController.popBackStack() in your own BackHandler as Navigation must be the only one handling its own back stack with the system back button so that Predictive Back works correctly in the future.

These changes broke our use case to override back handling in navigation library for closing the menu drawer. Please see more details in the issue I've reported.

I believe this is still an issue even without using NavHost like mentioned in comment #16. I filed a new issue here