Are libraries of GmsCore.apk extracted?

[ale5000-git]

Are libraries of GmsCore.apk extracted?

In the past libraries inside the apk were uncompressed so it was possible for Android to use them directly from inside the apk but now they are compressed so they have to be extracted manually in /product/priv-app/GmsCore/lib/....

Note that if you have updated microG and so the version used is the one on /data you won't notice the issue (since they are extracted automatically in this case) but if you use the version on system/product you will notice it.

[petefoth]

if you use the version on system/product you will notice it.

How will I notice it? What are the symptoms. On a clean install with GmsCore 0.3.7.250932 everything appears to be working fine.

[ale5000-git]

You will notice it when an external app try to use, for example, maps or conscrypt from microG (these use an .so library) then that app will crash or at least show errors in logcat.

[petefoth]

Is this change in all Android versions? Please can you point me at the documentation of the change

[ale5000-git]

Before Android 6/7 (I don't remember exactly) you had to always extract libs (manually for system apps) as they were never loaded from the apk; after this it was added the possibility to have them loaded in memory from inside the apk but only if the .so files inside the apk are stored uncompressed and zipaligned.

More info here: microg/GmsCore#2000

[ale5000-git]

See also here: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/application-element?hl=en#extractNativeLibs

[petefoth]

More info here: microg/GmsCore#2000

That PR was merged 2 years ago. So this issue has been in place since then? If that's the case, I guess the fix isn't that urgent :)

[ale5000-git]

That PR was merged 2 years ago. So this issue has been in place since then? If that's the case, I guess the fix isn't that urgent :)

It depends, because LineageOS for microG had included an unaffected version of microG (v0.2.27) for a lot of years (since many versions weren't marked as stable).
And if the user had updated microG via F-Droid (so the version used was changed to the one on /data), then even after updating the ROM the problem won't take place.

Also these problems are hard to notice from a point of view of an inexperienced user, so they end up with a lot of hardly debuggable tickets with text like "it doesn't work".

Even if it isn't really "urgent", in my opinion the importance is still high.

[ale5000-git]

Probably you neeed LOCAL_PREBUILT_JNI_LIBS.

See here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/64694422/490687
https://github.com/northbright/genandroidmk

[petefoth]

Thanks

Even if it isn't really "urgent", in my opinion the importance is still high.

Fair enough. The issue is there and on the 'ToDo' list so it will be addressed. But we have a very small team and a lot of other stuff to do, so no promises about when it will be fixed.

Also I am exploring better ways of installing the microG components (and F-Droid) so that we will not need to maintain this repo. The 'better' way is 'Use sfX-android/android_vendor_extendrom project to manage the extra components' #55
This pulls apk and other files from the correct F-Droid repo, no need for storing them in our repos, which solves #53 and #48 . Looking at that project, I think it may have the same problem with not extracting libraries. If that is the case, then better to solve it in one project rather than two\

Probably you neeed LOCAL_PREBUILT_JNI_LIBS.

See here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/64694422/490687
https://github.com/northbright/genandroidmk

Thanks again. I'll look at that now, and see if it is a quick fix

[petefoth]

Thanks again. I'll look at that now, and see if it is a quick fix

So run genandroidmk on GsmCore.apkand add the output to Android.mk. Would we need to do that for all the components we install?

Also - see #51 (and PR #52) which will replace Android.mk with Android.bp. I will need to find out how to use LOCAL_PREBUILT_JNI_LIBS in a .bp rthater than a .mk file

[ale5000-git]

Apparently it require to select an architecture and I'm not expert about Android.mk so I don't know how to handle it to be working for all devices.

[ale5000-git]

So run genandroidmk on GsmCore.apkand add the output to Android.mk. Would we need to do that for all the components we install?

You can open the apk with a zip archivier, only apk which include a "lib" folder (and the lib are compressed) need this, probably only GsmCore.apk

[petefoth]

The 'better' way is 'Use sfX-android/android_vendor_extendrom project to manage the extra components' #55 This pulls apk and other files from the correct F-Droid repo, no need for storing them in our repos, which solves #53 and #48 . Looking at that project, I think it may have the same problem with not extracting libraries. If that is the case, then better to solve it in one project rather than two\

Probably you neeed LOCAL_PREBUILT_JNI_LIBS.
See here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/64694422/490687
https://github.com/northbright/genandroidmk

Fro a quick look it seems like extendrom is already doing the right thing with LOCAL_PREBUILT_JNI_LIBS
https://github.com/sfX-android/android_vendor_extendrom/blob/e8f7c316228afa8d31ca6f1c12db56c20c6146e0/tools/extract_utils.sh#L241

More reason to use it :)