Unable to compile NDK project with com.android.tools.build:gradle-experimental:0.8.0-beta2

Hello,
everything used to work and compile under gradle-experimenta:0.7.0. However, with 0.8.0-beta2 I am now getting this error:

Caused by: org.gradle.nativeplatform.toolchain.internal.CommandLineToolInvocationFailure: C++ compiler failed while compiling myclass.cpp

It is very hard to troubleshoot these linker errors. How can I go about finding out what’s wrong?

I have fiddled with the android { ndk { cppFlags.add } } block, but nothing is helping.

Thank you,
Igor