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Comment by breatheoften | Hacker News Reader

Is the problem discussed in this article something that has to be worried about still? This is hideous ... By my understanding the only way the solution discussed in the article can work is by including the native libraries for every architecture inside the apk which seems like it will make the app larger than it needs to be ...

I think I'd rather just detect the issue and throw up an error telling the user that they've managed to install an apk built for the wrong architecture and need to install a different apk ...

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If you are distributing through Google Play (or, I assume, most 3rd party app stores), then you can provide a different apk depending on the target architecture. The problem they were running into (after they worked around the installation bug) was that some users would sideload their APK, but sideload the wrong version.

As far as I can tell, their ReLinker solution is only a workaround to the installation problem.

If you're clever enough to sideload are you not clever enough to recognize and remedy the problem? Developers should not be enabling people who aren't able to handle that responsibility.

Actually, now that I think of it, I can see a business requiring employee devices to be flashed with a set of apps but not wanting to put the effort to actually check that it'll work. In that case the developer should determine if the user is an individual or a company and in the later case sell them a contract for support.

There are popular "mirror" sites for apks, I wouldn't expect most users of them to be able to debug a wrong arch package download. Ideally the people taking the apks to mirror wouldn't pull thin apks, but sigh

Many people choose to not link their device to a Google account, so cannot access Google Play. Others use devices that haven't licensed Google Play. Widely used apps are frequently available officially as apk downloads (eg WhatsApp), or other more inclusive app stores (eg f-droid), others you have to get from unofficial sources.

F-droid hides versions with wrong architecture.

> If you're clever enough to sideload are you not clever enough to recognize and remedy the problem?

Hmm, I always shared apk files with friends when they simply were too big, kinda easy to do with ES File Explorer or other root-using file managers. Lucky for us, our CPU archs never proved to be a problem though.

But I can very well imagine this being a problem for warez, or people in countries not served by Google Play (or who simply have no easy access to payment, e.g. because they don't have a CC), or people with devices not sold with Google Play (cheap ass chinese phones).

> As far as I can tell, their ReLinker solution is only a workaround to the installation problem.

I guess it should be pretty simple to add a "wrong version for your device" killscreen to an app, once you realize it's a problem.

Yes, if you enable CPU ABI splits there will only be the lib for a specific architecture available in an apk.

You could load the lib from a remote server after install if you need to save space but if we are talking about saving 1-3 MB I'd definitely save myself the hassle and just pack the libs for all architectures in one apk file.

I guess you could delete the not needed libraries post installation? Then only the APK would be needlessly larger.

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