CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-support-library
Simon
Simon

Reputation: 13283

Why does the method count goes up not down when switching from android-support-v4 to v13

When switching from support library v4 to v13 I expected the method count number to go down because now all the methods which are in the SDK version 13+ don't have to be in the support jar anymore. Well I checked what happens when I exchange the v7 against the v13 and here are the method count numbers per package.

When using android-support-v4:

 android.support: 10117
    v4: 6402
    v7: 3712

and when using android-support-v13:

android.support: 10203
    v13: 82
    v4: 6406
    v7: 3712

Why are there still all methods from v4 (+4 additional ones?!) included in the v13 version? Reading http://developer.android.com/tools/support-library/features.html I thought the version number relates to the API level number.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 150

Answers (1)

CommonsWare
CommonsWare

Reputation: 1007359

When switching from support library v4 to v13 I expected the method count number to go down because now all the methods which are in the SDK version 13+ don't have to be in the support jar anymore.

No. support-v13 has everything that is in support-v4, plus additional classes that are only relevant for apps with a build target of API Level 13+.

Why are there still all methods from v4 (+4 additional ones?!) included in the v13 version?

Since the Android Support package pre-dated widespread Android use of things like Maven and Gradle, with transitive dependency support, Google elected to have support-v13 be a superset of support-v4. If they had to do it over again, they might have made support-v13 be a small JAR that depended upon support-v4.

Upvotes: 2

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