Android M HttpClient removal breaks compatibility?

Question

We know that Android M has removed support for HttpClient. Apps linking with it will have to explicitly say so: add a library dependency in your gradle file.

But does it break backward compatibility with existing applications?
Suppose I wrote an app which supports Api level 1 and higher and it's never maintained since last year. The targetSdkLevel of the app is certainly lower than 22. Will it crash on Android M？ The source code could have been lost.

Answer 1

The answer looks to be yes.

I looked in the Android M source code through the SDK manager, and the package for the client is not in the source.

Package name for the HttpClient:

org.apache.http.client.HttpClient

Existing paths:

org.apache.http.conn

org.apache.http.params