CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidproguarddecode
fuk
fuk

Reputation: 7

Using proguard in android apps

I have been working on android app development from past 4 months and now I have developed my first app and as it is easy to decompile a apk so we should use dex or proguard for shrinking and protection.The problem is I have read in an article that proguard may change the code so sometimes a app may misbehave ,this is my first app and I don't want to mess up.So before using proguard in my app I have few questions -

1.What are the points to keep in mind before using proguard.

2.I read you can use keep command but proguard will not obfuscate that code and it will remain same,so I want my all code but as I will use keep it won't do anything.

3.How to make sure that the after functioning of app is same as before after using proguard.

4.Is is necessary to sign app or make key for using proguard?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 68

Answers (1)

martinomburajr
martinomburajr

Reputation: 1265

Question1. What to keep in mind! The docs state that there may be unintended events that occur from using proguard

Be aware that code shrinking slows down the build time, so you should avoid using it on your debug build if possible. However, it's important that you do enable code shrinking on your final APK used for testing. After ProGuard shrinks your code, reading a stack trace is difficult (if not impossible) because the method names are obfuscated.

I believe this answers question 3 The key word here is test, test, test! The moment you create your release apk. Test the functionality against your use cases to see if the application is still running the way it should.

If you don't have tests yet I would recommend write some at least unit tests before you release and test the proguard app against that.

Question 4: No you do not need a key to use proguard. I have used it on my debug builds before.

So your typical release build variant could look something like this: //AndroidStudio3.0.1Canary

release {
            postprocessing {
                removeUnusedCode true
                removeUnusedResources true
                obfuscate true
                optimizeCode true
                proguardFile 'proguard-rules.pro'
            }
        }

Upvotes: 1

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