Is it possible to split my Android apk of 512MB into different parts or modules.
Compile small part of it into a release Apk (small Apk size) for Play Store.
Then fetch the remaining parts or modules from online or your own server during first time install on a device.
Thats:
Small Apk to Google Play Store
Fetch remaining big files after first install.
I am using Android Studio.
Of course you can, that can be easily achieved if you got to split heavy resources(like images, videos, databases). Here you must write some logic which will download that resources and will work with them after a successful download.
I cant imagine a situation when you must to split a code in a separate module, compiled code is light and dont increase apk size so much as another resources. Code can become heavy when there is a lot of code from libraries, in that case I suggest you to learn about Proguard Shrink.
Also you can learn why in android is not possible to load java modules in runtime. On of the reasons is performance given by JIT
Here a is workaround with ndk How do I import shared object libraries at runtime in Android?
Related
i just exported my game to use Play Asset delivery following this guide:
https://docs.unity3d.com/2021.1/Documentation/Manual/play-asset-delivery.html
in short
build app bundle enabled
split application binary also checked.
The exported aab size is 311mb and when uploading to google play it says:
base ----install_time ---30.1mb
UnityDataAssetPack ----install time ---264mb
But then when i download the app in any device, the file size is 846mb, more than double the expected size. Also it tries to download all at once, i thought that the dataassetpack was downloaded after the base one.
i'm using Unity 2021.1.16f1
Do you know any cause for this to happen, and how to fix it?
thank you very much!
You are comparing a "download size" to a "size on disk":
The size you see in the Play Console corresponds to the download size, which is compressed.
On the device, you see the size on disk where the data is stored uncompressed so it can be directly rendered without having to keep two copies of the same data (one compressed and one uncompressed), so that explains the discrepancy.
It seems that you have configured the modules to be install-time so they will be installed as part of the initial install. If you want them to be installed while the user is starting the game, you should configure them to be fast-follow. If you want to manually download them using the Play Core API, you should configure them to be on-demand. This is all explained in the page you linked in the Managing asset packs at runtime section.
That page also links to the Google documentation on the topic, which has a dedicated section for Unity -- which would be too long to copy here, so have a read and come back if you have more specific questions.
If you're only using Unity marking the AAB output type in the build settings, and not using Google's API to do your stuff via script, then it's correct. Unity has a bug when assembling bundles and will simply (at least) double the size of your app. Things will be doubled in your AAB, you'll see the stuff you had in streaming assets in split apks and also inside the base.apk. Unity's way is not reliable, it's quite wrong and Google's plain way for Unity also is not perfect, it will not work for every single project. I was able to get the hang of it, but in the end I wrote our own tool to create the asset packs, created our runtime implementation to use the API and also our build procedures to be called by our custom build class.
My suggestion is, squeeze the docs here https://developer.android.com/guide/playcore/asset-delivery/integrate-unity?language=api and build your custom solution.
Scenario:
I have an app with a lot of high res drawable images. I would like to deliver those assets with the build as opposed to via web/http/cdn.
Problem:
When uploading my .aab to google, I'm told that certain configurations will result in a build over the 150MB limit.
What I've tried:
I've extracted most of the large images to an install-time Dynamic Feature Module.
Using bundletool, I've simulated an xxxhdpi device on arm64 with two languages. The resulting base apks do not exceed 150MB. The Dynamic Feature Module apks ("packimages-*.apk") do, but as far as I can tell, that's not only ok, but that is Google's recommended way of reducing base apk size.
The limit on 150 MB is on the download size at installation time.
Since you mentioned that you configured the dynamic features to be "install-time", they will also be served at installation time and are thus counted towards the limit.
You may want to consider images that are needed at installation time (which you can leave in the base module) and images that can be downloaded at a later time (which you can put in an on-demand module) using the Play Core SDK.
The short summary is: How do I build an APK and separate libraries (by which I mean sets of classes (and ideally, resources too) in some form, such as JAR, AAR or DEX files), but not include those libraries in the APK; instead, the app loads them at run time?
Detail
So my main question is how to build such an app (e.g. Gradle configuration). How do I specify which classes go into which JAR or DEX files? Do I create an Android Studio module for each DEX file I want to end up with?
A closely related question is how the Java code should then load the external libraries and access their classes at run time. For the latter, I'm hopeful that the approach shown at accessing to classes of app from dex file by classloader would work.
I've tried the instructions at https://developer.android.com/studio/projects/android-library.html, but that builds an APK that does include the dependency library.
I've also tried Multidex (https://developer.android.com/studio/build/multidex.html), but that doesn't seem to leave the developer any control over which classes go in which DEX file, and furthermore, packages them all into a single APK. AFAICT there is no way to control the loading of these DEX files at run time.
Background
There's a possibility of the "X-Y problem" here, so I'd better explain the background.
I'm building an app for a client. It's not going to be distributed through an app store, so it won't have access to the normal mechanism for updates. Instead, the client wants the app to be able to update itself by downloading new components of itself to replace the old components, without a need to manually sideload a new APK. The primary motive here is that the updates have to be easy for non-technical users. If the app can control the update process, it can make it smooth and guide the user.
Moreover, the app will be used in areas where internet access is scarce and expensive, so the client wants to be able to issue app updates in smaller chunks (e.g. 2MB) rather than forcing the user to re-download the whole app to receive a small update.
One aspect of the requirements I should mention, in case it matters, is that the libraries to be loaded at run time are supposed to live on a microSD card. This can also help with distribution of updates without internet access.
The current status of the app is that it's about 50% written: That is, a couple of earlier versions have been released, but the app now needs to be modified (restructured) to meet the above requirements, as well as others.
This tutorial is a good start for external loading of DEX files.
Only three small files of source (MainActivity.java, LibraryInterface.java, LibraryProvider.java) and it copies secondary_dex.jar from the assets folder, into internal application storage [outdex/dex] (the internet is also stated as possible in the tutorial).
You have to build it with ant, because it uses custom build steps.
I tried it, it works fine. Worth a look.
custom class loading in Dalvik and ART
UPDATE
this code has been ported to Android Studio gradle (no need for ant).
https://github.com/timrae/custom-class-loader
Tested ok. Copies com.example.toastlib.jar from the SDcard into internal application storage [outdex/dex],(not assets folder).
( you must read the README.md file in the project to build it).
Q: How do I add an Activity, I cannot add it to the manifest ? A: Use
Fragments, they don't need entries in the manifest.
Q: A Jar with resources that is meant to be added to an existing
project needs to be able to merge its resources with the project's
own resources (R.). A: Hacks are available, Data file...Packaging Android resource files within a distributable Jar file
Q: The external file has wrong permissions. A: Import it.
Q: I need to add uses-permission. A: Use API23 you can programmatically add uses-permissions (but they still need to be declared in the Manifest, so the new permissions model is probably not much use to us).
This section is for more general users (#LarsH has more specific requirements about updates), The example above is 17kb apk and 1 kb jar. You could put the bulk of you code in the one-off jar, and updates would involve just loading an new Apk (and then importing the bulk code jar, to minimise the data transfer).
When the Apk gets too big, start again with a small Apk and everything migrated to another jar (import 2 jar's). You need to balance coding effort, user experience, maintainability, supportability, bandwidth, android rules, play store rules (if these words even exist ;O)).
NOTE Dalvik is discontinued
The successor of Dalvik is Android Runtime (ART), which uses the same bytecode and .dex files (but not .odex files), with the succession aiming at performance improvements transparent to the end users. The new runtime environment was included for the first time in Android 4.4 "KitKat" as a technology preview, and replaced Dalvik entirely in later versions; Android 5.0 "Lollipop" is the first version in which ART is the only included runtime.
You could try to build multiple apk's with the same sharedUserId and the same process.
This is the plugin mechanism used by Threema
Edit: More about Theema
Threema has one main app and two plugins:
main app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app
QR-Code Plugin: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.qrscannerplugin
Voicemessage Plugin: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.voicemessageplugin
Doing so the main app does not need the permissions for accessing the camera or microphone
I am including a JAR file into my android project and is using some of the classes present in the JAR (not all the JAR).
I want to know, the size of the apk that is generated after building the project is dependent on the JAR I have included or it is dependent only on the classes that I have used in my project.
The entire jar will be included in the APK. You may have used some classes, but they are internally dependent to a large extent. Also, the classes which are not used get included.
An APK is an Android application package file. Each Android application is compiled and packaged in a single file that includes all of the application’s code (.dex files), resources, assets, and manifest file. The APK file is basically a .zip file, so there’s no way of compressing its size any further.
Memory space on smartphones is often a competitive area, now that most users are storing music, video, messages are more, in addition to downloading apps. The smaller you make your APK, the better it is for the user, and that may be a deciding factor on whether to download your app, versus a similar app that takes up more phone memory.
Tips for reducing file size
There are a number of recommendations for reducing static footprint. You can choose the ones that fit best for your own particular needs. Proguard is the one option.
Check HERE for more details of reducing the apk size.
ProGuard
A tool for code shrinking, like ProGuard, will significantly reduce the static foot print. Note that it is very important to re-test all of the application after applying ProGuard since it may change the application behavior.
As ProGuard replaces the application symbols, to make the code difficult to read, it is important that you retain the symbol mapping, so that you can translate a stack trace back to the original symbols if you have to investigate a crash in your application.
Yes. By default the whole jar goes into the apk.
You can use ProGuard to strip all the stuff you don't need during compilation.
I'm creating an app with 3 different languages. Every language contains a separate audio file (8 mb each).
Is it possible to split/export the project to 3 different .apk files prior to release on Market? I really do not want to put everything in one .apk due to the 24+ mb file size.
I can see a few options...
Manually build each one, release them as separate products in the Market in each language, e.g. "MyApp English", "MyApp Francais" etc. You could limit which countries see each one, to reduce confusion.
Same as above, but use Ant to automate the Android build process, so you can have one project for the app, but easily build a version in any language. Ant is quite involved, but I'd that in about a day you could learn enough to get an Ant build script running for your project. Android has built-in command line tools to help, so it'll create an initial Ant script for you (look at the "android" command line tool).
Create a single app, and when it starts, ask the user to confirm the language they want, and then start the download. Ideally you'd download a little bit initially to allow the app to work, and download the rest in the background so they don't have to wait. 8MB is quite a lot of data, so beware people will data expensive data plans so I think it is polite to always ask their permission for the download.
If it were me I'd probably lean towards the last option as it's simpler to build one app, and with sucha big download, the user needs to be in control of the process. Bear in mind many people wouldn't download an 8MB app if they knew beforehand it is that big.