What & why

1. Cluster-renderer crash — our #1 FATAL (932 users, live on 2.7.14 (29321010))

com.google.maps.android.compose.clustering.ComposeUiClusterRenderer.renderViewToBitmapDescriptor — IllegalStateException: Composed into the View which doesn't propagate ViewTreeLifecycleOwner!

Passing clusterItemContent makes maps-compose rasterize the node chip through an off-screen ComposeView that has no reachable ViewTreeLifecycleOwner/SavedStateRegistryOwner, fired from the cluster renderer's async Handler — a race the owner-propagation band-aids (#5704/#5708) could never win.

Fix: replace the Composable cluster path with a custom DefaultClusterRenderer<NodeClusterItem> that paints chips as Canvas BitmapDescriptors (the same approach #5702 used for plain markers). No ComposeView is ever created, so the crash class is eliminated, not raced. Precision circles are preserved by exposing the renderer's unclustered-item set (the library's clusterItemDecoration hook is internal-gated and won't fire for a non-library renderer, so we draw the Circles directly).

2. "All black Google Maps" — app-side fallback

MapView set MapType.NONE whenever a custom tile provider URL was selected. If getTileProvider() returned null (bad {x}/{y}/{z} template, missing local MBTiles), the TileOverlay was skipped and the base map stayed NONE → solid black, no recourse.

Fix: resolve the provider once (hoisted/remembered) and use MapType.NONE only when a working provider exists; otherwise fall back to the user's selected base map, with a Logger.w so a broken source is diagnosable.

3. Centralized Maps init + renderer logging (diagnostics)

New google-flavor MapsSdkInitializer: keeps the synchronous single-arg MapsInitializer.initialize (preserves #5709's BitmapDescriptorFactory readiness guarantee) and registers the renderer callback once to log which renderer (LATEST/LEGACY) actually loaded, via Kermit (→ Crashlytics/Datadog through the existing sanctioned writers). The LEGACY renderer was decommissioned in March 2025 — we can only observe the renderer, not force it — so this turns the documented "Latest-renderer goes black for some users" reports into something correlatable in field telemetry.

Reviewer notes

• google-flavor only — fdroid uses OSMDroid and never references Maps; both :androidApp:compileGoogleDebugKotlin and :androidApp:compileFdroidDebugKotlin pass, as do spotlessCheck and detekt.
• Behavioral trade-off: cluster chips lose the pulse-on-recent-heard animation (now static Canvas chips, matching the existing NodeTrack/Traceroute markers). Worth it to kill a 932-user FATAL.
• Known limitation (out of scope): a custom provider that builds but whose tiles 404 at runtime still shows NONE underneath — needs server-side tile validation, a separate effort.
• Not yet done: full assembleDebug/test/allTests baseline and on-device verification (cluster markers render + no crash; broken custom tile → base map; logcat renderer/fallback lines). CI will run the full suite.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code