Cost of importing libraries - android

I've been working on an Android app project. I'm using quite a few libraries (because why redo work that someone else has done to make other people's life easier?).
My question is: what are the costs of importing libraries in a project? (I'm talking about the implementation XXX.YYY:v2.0.0 type of line added in the build.gradle dependencies list.)
Just as an example (though please provide a more encompassing answer): when compiling and publishing my application, does it take all of the libraries' classes and methods and put them in my application, thus making it much heavier than it would need to be?

Each library dependency requires an additional download while you compile your app. So these will increase the amount of time required to compile.
The code for each library is included in your final APK so they will increase the size.

For Every Library a download is necessary In order to built your app.
e.g If you want Libraries regarding to Firebase then You download the Library by adding the Firebase Project to your App. In build.gradle File you see the dependencies after you add them to Your Project App.

Related

What dependencies should one be putting in each module of an instant app?

I'm in the process of writing an instant app for others to learn how to write an instant app and hoping to get some ideas on how to best structure the app for dependencies.
Now reading the Android developer docs on project structure and referencing the diagram below:
I'm wondering with the new gradle 3.0 dependency configurations, what libraries should live in which modules?
Base Feature
I was thinking pretty much anything in the base feature module should be using the api gradle configuration since the base feature module essentially compiles down to an AAR library file. One question I might have for this module, if one was to use ROOM would this be the module to place it in?
Feature
Now in the feature modules, it is my understanding that everything should be utilizing the implementation gradle configuration since these modules should not leak there dependencies out to any other modules in order to truly make them independent from one another.
Just looking for some confirmation of my understanding and also any ideas to help with the project. Here is the github repo if you want to check out the code I got so far. It is really simple at the moment, but I was thinking about messing around with the Star Wars API using Retrofit.
Thanks for any help and gladly accept any contributions if you want to to try and make a pull request yourself for any other concepts in making an instant app that others should know.
Shared details in your question are correct. Consider some of the below suggestions which add to the points mentioned by TWL:
Adding certain libraries to specific feature module which should
be included in the feature module only, instead of being added in the
base APK.
For example, let's say you have an application that depends on
libraries X, Y, and Z. Initially, you may pack all the libraries in
the base module by placing all the dependencies in the base
gradle.build file. But if only the code in the feature module requires
library Z, it makes sense to move that dependency from the base module
to the feature module.This works as long as no other feature modules
depend on the same library. If multiple feature modules use the same
library it definitely makes sense to keep it in the base module.
Taking care of Transitive dependencies.
Transitive dependencies occur when the library your project relies
upon depends on another library, which in turn may depend on yet
another library. Sometimes those transitive dependencies may contain
unexpected surprises such as libraries you do not need at all (i.e. a
JSON processing library you never use in your code.)
I hope this adds some information to your query,
I'm wondering with the new gradle 3.0 dependency configurations, what libraries should live in which modules?
Some of these links can also be referred for additional data:
Android Instant Apps(best-practices)
AIA structure
As mentioned by keyboardsurfer, your dependency assumption is in the right direction.
Base is at the root and acts like a library shared by all the
non-base feature modules, so its shared dependencies should be set with
api so that modules that depend on it can also access them. (though, base doesn't have to act only like a library, it can
also be a feature APK itself)
Features, as an instant app, each one extends out to the end as its own APK, so there's no reason it should be leaking its dependencies to any other modules and therefore dependencies should be set with implementation here.
Within the Google Samples, the cookie-api and install-api are some samples that more clearly demonstrate the dependency configuration usage as how I explained above.

Better way to import library project in Android

I was wondering what is the recommended way of including library projects in an Android Studios gradle like this:
First way:
compile 'de.greenrobot:greendao:2.1.0'
Second way:
compile files('libs/greendao-2.0.0.jar')
and what are the pros and cons.
In the first case gradle is completely handling the process of dependency management, i.e. downloading the jar and including it in your project.
In the second case you have to manually download the jar and include it in the libs folder.
The simpler and preferred way is the first.
First way: compile 'de.greenrobot:greendao:2.1.0'
PRO:
Easy, quick to update
CON:
Internet connection required when updating your gradle file
Second way: compile files('libs/greendao-2.0.0.jar')
PRO:
You can make changes to the library and those won't be overwritten.
Like Qian Sijianhao said, it's quicker to build.
CON:
More work to set up, update
In most cases I think you want to go with the first way.
Trust me, the second way will save lots of your building time.
By the way , time is money.
In the first way, i.e:
compile 'de.greenrobot:greendao:2.1.0'
compile 'com.library.sample:library:x.x.x'
Gradle will finding these dependencies, and making them available in your build. If your dependencies have a dependencies, gradle will also finding them and include it for the project. So you don't need to manually add all the dependencies.
Quoting from Gradle documentation:
7.1. What is dependency management?
Very roughly, dependency management is made up of two pieces. Firstly,
Gradle needs to know about the things that your project needs to build
or run, in order to find them. We call these incoming files the
dependencies of the project. Secondly, Gradle needs to build and
upload the things that your project produces. We call these outgoing
files the publications of the project. Let's look at these two pieces
in more detail:
Most projects are not completely self-contained. They need files built
by other projects in order to be compiled or tested and so on. For
example, in order to use Hibernate in my project, I need to include
some Hibernate jars in the classpath when I compile my source. To run
my tests, I might also need to include some additional jars in the
test classpath, such as a particular JDBC driver or the Ehcache jars.
These incoming files form the dependencies of the project. Gradle
allows you to tell it what the dependencies of your project are, so
that it can take care of finding these dependencies, and making them
available in your build. The dependencies might need to be downloaded
from a remote Maven or Ivy repository, or located in a local
directory, or may need to be built by another project in the same
multi-project build. We call this process dependency resolution.
Note that this feature provides a major advantage over Ant. With Ant,
you only have the ability to specify absolute or relative paths to
specific jars to load. With Gradle, you simply declare the “names” of
your dependencies, and other layers determine where to get those
dependencies from. You can get similar behavior from Ant by adding
Apache Ivy, but Gradle does it better.
Often, the dependencies of a project will themselves have
dependencies. For example, Hibernate core requires several other
libraries to be present on the classpath with it runs. So, when Gradle
runs the tests for your project, it also needs to find these
dependencies and make them available. We call these transitive
dependencies.
Gradle will store the downloaded library to your USER_HOME/.gradle. In Linux, it will store it in /home/user/.gradle/caches/modules-2/. in Mac it will store it in ~/.gradle/caches/modules-2/.
By the way, if you have used the library, you can set Android Studio to use a local cache of the library.
In the second way, you need to manually add the library for your project. And you also need to include all the remaining dependencies of the library. This is so error prone.

creating a gradle dependency - remove access to its own dependencies

An unreleased android library I am working on has a third party networking library in it - OkHttp in this case.
Projects that use this library as a dependency also are now able to create objects with that networking library.
Can I limit or disable access to the networking library contained within my library?
You could make the dependency transitive however if your code hits the missing code inside their app it will fail ClassNotFound or MethodNotFound
dependencies {
compile('com.squareup.okhttp3:okhttp:3.2.0') {
transitive = false
}
}
Short of that once the code is packaged with your lib it's available to anyone who wants to use it from your lib.
This still won't solve the problem as you would like but you could use proguard to rename the okhttp classes. Users of your lib could still call the okhttp classes but they would be renamed by proguard to something like a,b,c,...
What you want to do is shade the dependency. Here's a description from a blog post about shading dependencies in Gradle:
To Shade a library is to take the contents files of said library, put
them in your own jar, and change their package.This is different from
packaging which is simply shipping the libraries files in side your
own jar without relocating them to a different package. The term
fatjar is commonly used to refer to jars that have the application as
well as its dependencies packaged or shaded into them.
It's easy to do for smaller libraries. I could image it might be difficult for a large library like OkHttp. You can do it manually by simply copying the files into your project and changing the package. There are also some scripts that will do it automatically. They usually use Jar Jar Links.
Normally be default you don't have the dependencies like that:
compile rootProject.ext.okhttp
compiled in your jar only your sources are. So OkHttp classes will not be in your lib.
I have exactly the same case. I use gradle to build and upload to maven.
You can check here
So if your intention is to have the exact dept version in the package and to be hidden you just need to include it in you project as a module and to change some things like the package of OkHttp to avoid conflicts and also the access to currenly public okhttp members. OkHttp is using Okio so you may want to privatize it too.
Note that this kind of shadowing + hiding functionality of the shadowed class can be useful for framework dependencies(ensuring all depts in runtime available) but it is increasing the size of your libs and will not be the best option for apps using your lib as they anyway ensure packaging required depts in the apk.

Using open source libraries in Android projects

I'm a beginner in Android programing, and I'm working with android studio...now i wander what is the best way for installing open sources libraries from gitHub.
my question is from organization principles point of view-
should i create a new package for every library and put all the library source code as is in that package? should the package be in the source.main.java folder?? (the one that the android studio creates automaticly).
sorry for the dumb question...it's just that im taking my first baby steps in a big scale program and i don't want to loose my head in the future because of bad organization practices.
There's no right answer to this question. A few wrong ways to do it, but common sense will guide you.
My advice:
Start by having the source of this open source code checked into your company's source control system somewhere and capable of being built or re-built as needed. Not necessarily in your project, but just getting the code checked in so it can't be lost or confused with the original author's ever evolving changes on GitHub.
As to how you consume it, you have several options.
Build the open source in it's own project (checked into source control, but separate from your main project). Then just take the drop of compiled files (.class, .jar, .lib, etc...) and check that into your main project. This is the most flexible option if you don't think you are ever going to need to change the open source code that often. Has the side benefit of being managed for several projects.
Drop the source code as-is directly into your project. This means you will always be rebuilding the code. This gives the most flexibility with evolving and changing the the code specific to your project needs.
There's probably hybrid solutions of these options as well.
The bottom line is that whatever you use needs to be copied and building in your own system. Because the code you pulled down from GitHub could go away or change significantly at any time.
A simple solution would be to use JitPack to import those GitHub projects into your gradle build.
First you need to add the repository:
repositories {
maven { url "https://jitpack.io" }
}
and then all the GitHub repositories as dependencies:
dependencies {
compile 'com.github.RepoOwner:Repo:Version'
// more dependencies...
}
Behind the scenes JitPack will check out the code and compile it.
I think you are looking for this. If you are using eclipse, you should check this
If you are looking for adding jar file to your lib, you can simply create a lib folder in your project and add jar file into the library and you must add the line compile files('jarfile.jar') in the build file(gradle build). If you are using eclipse you can follow this
By the way, creating a package for each library and putting all library source codes doesn't look sane to me. It is almost equivalent to recreating the project. I'm sure that it is not the proper approach.
If the third-party code is packaged as a .jar or a .aar and made available in public-facing maven repository (e.g. maven central), then you should add the library as a dependency in your build.gradle file.
If it is not available as a maven/gradle dependency, you could add the library's code to your project as suggested in other answers here. I have never liked that solution at all.
You could also build the .jar or .aar and add that to your project's lib directory, as also suggested by other answers here. For a small, simple project with few dependencies, that might make sense.
What I like to do for larger, longer-lived projects, is to set up my own Nexus server (a Maven repo server), and put the third-party dependencies there.

Build a closed source Android library based on Gradle

I would like built a closed source android library using the Gradle. My library has some dependencies to open source projects. How should I structure my library? Can I use gradle?
Can I use gradle?
Short answer:
Yes.
Long answer:
I would assume that your library is packaged as aar (contains resources and compiled bytecode).
First thing you need to know is that at the moment of writing this post there is no way to create fat-aar libraries, which means that you'll have to distribute dependencies of your library separately. The most convenient way to do that, in my opinion, is to generate pom.xml file and publish your library on Maven repository (maven plugin can do all of that), so clients will just fetch all dependencies themselves. Since it is a "private" library, that could be your company's closed repo by access rights (in simple words - create special user for your repo and share password with interested parties).
One downside here is that all dependencies will be exposed in pom.xml and you won't be able to obfuscate them. Personally, I don't think that this is an issue.
Moreover, you get the huge advantage of being able to deploy build automatically and let clients use snapshot versions of the library. This is extremely helpful when you're trying to fix issues and want to deliver them to users fast. On client's side, all they need to do is either just update version in their build.gradle or just re-sync project in case if they were using snapshot.
Second thing. Since your library is closed source, you need to run proguard to obfuscate everything but public interface of your library (all public methods which are exposed to end user).
Remember, that even after obfuscation your code still can be decompiled and all string literals are still there. So, although it was said million times already, avoid storing any critical data in the library (such as passwords, keys, etc.). It is not as hard to extract it as you might think it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X28Oogg2Q3k
Third thing. I highly suggest you to create internal test project (as a gradle submodule) which will use your library, so you will be sure that you're not making any breaking changes.
Hopefully this answer made things at least a bit easier for you.

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