[Android] Alternative Packaging/Fusing Method Suggestions

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AuahDark
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[Android] Alternative Packaging/Fusing Method Suggestions

Post by AuahDark »

As per Google announcements, submitting updates (or new apps) in Play Store starting on Q2 2021 requires Android Application Bundle. This renders the Game_Distribution/APKTool method obsolete.

Recently I realize that there's 2 ways to fix this, both with their downsides:
  1. Tell user to complie from source. This offers user the highest flexibility, including modification to the Java side (or even C++ side if user also needs to embed external Lua C modules) of the app. The downside is user needs to download GBs of SDKs and NDKs and additional build-time dependency, which may not suitable for some users due to slow internet and/or low disk space (those things are huge).
  2. Perform modification to Android Application Budle. This requires knowledge on the bundle format (it's just zip file with specifically structured files inside), especially how the AndroidManifest.xml is encoded. Also GitHub Actions already provides AAB as the artifacts so someone can simply grab those AABs. The downside is someone needs to contribute to the script to manipulate AABs, which can means never. I also don't know if this method is even allowed by Google. Relevant tweet.
Any suggestion and pointer is welcome.

Cross-posted from the GitHub issue.
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