CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgradlejava-native-interfaceabi
Yao Jenn
Yao Jenn

Reputation: 65

How do I define a secondary ABI for my Android app

As stated in Android ABIs guide: https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/abis

The section Automatic extraction of native code at install time states that:

When installing an application, the package manager service scans the APK, and looks for any shared libraries of the form:

lib/<primary-abi>/lib<name>.so

If none is found, and you have defined a secondary ABI, the service scans for shared libraries of the form:

lib/<secondary-abi>/lib<name>.so

Background: My app depends on an external library accessed through the JNI interface, but I was only provided with the e.g. libLibrary.so file for the armeabi architecture. My app also uses another library which supports few different architectures like arm64-v8a etc. So, at runtime, I got an error like this because it couldn't find the libLibrary.so:

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: dalvik.system.PathClassLoader[DexPathList[... /system/lib64]]] couldn't find "libLibrary.so"

Edit:

I was wondering if it is fine if I copied the libLibrary.so from the armeabi folder into armeabi-v7a folder when the other libraries I depend on have .so files for armeabi-v7a but not armeabi. I have tested my app and it uses the library without problems when I set in gradle:

ndk.abiFilters "armeabi-v7a"

to only output the armeabi-v7a libraries in the apk file to make the app use them only.

So, I am wondering if it is just fine like that. I am using what is suggested here: https://medium.com/livefront/native-android-libraries-gone-bad-e7ff63f34bb

Upvotes: 2

Views: 631

Answers (1)

Alex Cohn
Alex Cohn

Reputation: 57173

As Michael writes, you cannot deploy an app with partial support for arm64-v8a. As long as you don't upload the app to Play Store (e.g. during development and testing), you should strip away the 64-bit binaries from your APK. As of today, all devices will still run an armeabi binary, but I expect 64-bit only devices in coming years.

If you intend to distribute the app via Google Play Store, you must make sure your app runs without 32-bit binaries. Sometimes, when the sources of a native lib are not available, it's easier to reproduce the missing functionality in Java/Kotlin.

Upvotes: 2

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