Does Android cache the libraries?

Question

I am working on a device driver which android apps use. Whenever I make a small modification to the driver and recompile the modified drivers, it seems like the app is not using the modified driver but still use=ing the previous version. I am sure about this because the modifications made includes print statement which doesn't showup when the app runs.

However, once I delete the driver and rebuild it or restart the system then it seems to work fine. The problem with doing this is that it is time consuming, because I have to be sure that the app is using the latest driver.

So my question is that whether android cache the libraries? If so are there any simple hacks to prevent it from doing so?

EDIT: As a matter of fact I can delete my device driver and the app which uses it still runs without reporting a problem about missing driver !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 1

Yes, android apks do cache the libraries. If you have installed xyz.apk on your board, then there will be folder created called com.xyz, this folder will contain a cache folder which will cache the libraries, so newly modified driver is not picked up by the apk.
To bypass this effect you can

1. Manually delete the cache folder from the above mentioned location.
2. Uninstall the apk and re-install it agian
3. Reboot the board