[Bug report] MLKit.Initialize() fails with NullPointerException on Android 11 devices

[sangrao]

Describe the bug
To optimize app startup, we disabled ContentProvider and explicitly call MLKit.Initialize(). However, we observed crashes on some devices, most commonly chromebook + Android 11. Note that we have integrated with both the bundled and unblunded library.

To Reproduce
Example Steps to reproduce the behavior in sample app:

1. Add dependency to mlkit lib specified in the SDK section below
2. set meta-data for unbundled models

		<meta-data
			android:name="com.google.mlkit.vision.DEPENDENCIES"
			android:value="barcode,ocr" />

3. Disable Content Provider as
   <provider android:name="com.google.mlkit.common.internal.MlKitInitProvider" android:authorities="${applicationId}.mlkitinitprovider" tools:node="remove" />
4. In the activity, before accessing any ML kit feature invoke MLKit.Initialize(context), with context value being application context. Note, care has been taken to invoke this method only once.

Expected behavior
MLKit is initialized successfully. However, on certain devices crashlytics captured the below error

Caused by java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'int java.util.AbstractCollection.size()' on a null object reference
       at com.google.android.gms.internal.mlkit_vision_object_detection_bundled.zzar.<init>(com.google.mlkit:object-detection@@16.2.5:1)
       at com.google.android.gms.internal.mlkit_vision_object_detection_bundled.zzat.<clinit>(com.google.mlkit:object-detection@@16.2.5:1)
       at com.google.android.gms.internal.mlkit_vision_object_detection_bundled.zzat.zzh(com.google.mlkit:object-detection@@16.2.5:2)
       at com.google.android.gms.internal.mlkit_vision_object_detection_bundled.zzat.zzj(com.google.mlkit:object-detection@@16.2.5:1)
       at com.google.android.gms.internal.mlkit_vision_object_detection_bundled.zzot.<clinit>(com.google.mlkit:object-detection@@16.2.5:13)
       at com.google.mlkit.vision.objects.defaults.internal.DefaultObjectsRegistrar.getComponents(com.google.mlkit:object-detection@@16.2.5:17)
       at com.google.firebase.components.ComponentRuntime.discoverComponents(ComponentRuntime.java:117)
       at com.google.firebase.components.ComponentRuntime.<init>(ComponentRuntime.java:99)
       at com.google.firebase.components.ComponentRuntime.<init>(ComponentRuntime.java:46)
       at com.google.firebase.components.ComponentRuntime$Builder.build(ComponentRuntime.java:387)
       at com.google.mlkit.common.sdkinternal.MlKitContext.zza(com.google.mlkit:common@@17.3.0:9)
       at com.google.mlkit.common.MlKit.initialize(com.google.mlkit:common@@17.3.0:1)

SDK Info:

• com.google.mlkit:object-detection:16.2.5
• com.google.android.gms:play-services-mlkit-barcode-scanning:16.2.1
• com.google.android.gms:play-services-mlkit-image-labeling:16.0.5
• com.google.android.gms:play-services-mlkit-text-recognition:16.1.1

Smartphone:
Mostly Chromebook

100% on Android 11 devices

[ai-plays]

Thanks for the detailed info!

The object-detection 16.2.5 is a quite old version from ~3 years ago. https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/release-notes#may_25_2021

The latest version is 17.0.1.

Do you see same error logs from newer versions?