After recent updates to Android Studio, the Gradle plugin, and other libraries, my app works just fine on debug builds with coreLibraryDesugaring enabled (v1.1.6 and v2.0.0).

However, when building the release version, it crashes right at the beginning with this stack trace:

Exception java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Failed resolution of: Lj$/util/Map;
  at java.lang.Class.newInstance (Class.java)
  at android.app.AppComponentFactory.instantiateProvider (AppComponentFactory.java:147)
  at androidx.core.app.CoreComponentFactory.instantiateProvider (CoreComponentFactory.java:67)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.installProvider (ActivityThread.java:7411)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.installContentProviders (ActivityThread.java:6939)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.handleBindApplication (ActivityThread.java:6710)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500 (ActivityThread.java:247)
  at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage (ActivityThread.java:2053)
  at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage (Handler.java:106)
  at android.os.Looper.loopOnce (Looper.java:201)
  at android.os.Looper.loop (Looper.java:288)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.main (ActivityThread.java:7839)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke (Method.java)
  at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run (RuntimeInit.java:548)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main (ZygoteInit.java:1003)

Happens on all API levels.

Disabling core library desguaring entirely fixes the issue, as I don't rely on any desugared APIs.

Project details:

Android Studio version: Giraffe 2022.3.1 Canary 1. Android Gradle Plugin version: 8.1.0-alpha01. Kotlin version: 1.8.0. Gradle version (in wrapper): gradle-8.0-rc-1

Hope you fix this soon.