Resolving com.android.build.api.transform.TransformException for task transformClassesWithDexForDebug

I encountered an Android Studio build exception while compiling an Android application to run on a device. The error message is shown in the screen shot below:


The message about classes and Dex gave a huge clue about the cause of the exception; I came across somewhere that there is a limit to the number of classes in a Dex file and Google Play Services use a lot of classes. My app's build.gradle has the dependency to the full com.google.android.gms:play-services:x:x:x file, as shown below.



So one method to reduce the number of classes is to use subsets of the Google Play Services library. Instead of the full com.google.android.gms:play-services dependency, my build.gradle file now has the following dependency line:
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:x.x.x'

Following this change, the application builds successfully, as shown in the console screen shot below.