Android Market multiple APK... How about different CPU architectures?

Question

So I thought I could now upload my app using different NDK compiled libraries for targeted CPU architectures but it seems like that's not possible.

Anyone know how to upload to the Android Market different APKs each containing libraries compiled specifically for different CPU architectures?

I haven't tried this and seems like a waist of space, but can we include multiple compiled libraries in one APK?

Update:
Apparently when the user installs the apk the unsupported libraries will not be installed on the device. This is good but the user still has to download the entire apk wasting bandwidth.

Answer 1

Well, finally Google Play allows to have Multi-apk targeting!

"We have added new functionality for apps that use multiple APK support. You can now target each APK to a specific native platform."

Answer 2

Unless you have a bunch of code for your app, I would suggest just putting the native code for the three architectures that android supports and the moment, armv5, armv7, and x86. It willl triple the size of the code portion of your apk, but 3*(a small number) is still a small number. You can do this by modifying your jni/Application.mk file, or creating it if you don't already have it, and add the line:

APP_ABI := armeabi armeabi-v7a x86

This will compile for all three.

Note though that there's a bug with the current ndk (ndk r6), that tries to link the x86 code to the arm code. This is fixed if you get the AOSP project, source.android.com, or you can just wait until google releases r6b, which will likely have the fix. Otherwise, if you you don't want to do that, you can just leave off the x86 portion of the line for now, and release your app without x86 code in it, and push an update when the new ndk comes out. I'm not aware of many popular devices that use x86 instructions yet.

Answer 3

Please see Multiple APK Support in the Android documentation. This details some of the specifics of releasing multiple APKs of the same product/application.

As for the NDK specifics, and as already mentioned, you can utilize multiple platforms / ABIs in the APP_ABI value of your Android.mk.