Watch out for transitive dependencies: an “obvious” rant

This article is just a short “rant” and a “therapy session” to remind and warn my future self.

I was recently debugging a weird crash affecting some users. The issue was related to navigation, fragments, and backstacks.

After weeks spent trying to reproduce it, reading online reports, and cross-referencing previous libraries and SDK updates, I finally had an illuminating moment after reading about a similar behavior in the Google Issue Tracker. It made me wonder: Could something have changed in the Android Manifest?

And yes, that change was coming to an external library.

The learning here is simple and perhaps obvious, but it’s something we tend to forget:

Always double-check what changes are being introduced when updating a library!

There might be hidden bugs or unexpected behaviors lurking beneath the surface.