Most of my apps have a size of 60-95 MB (APK). I add the large files (mostly audio files) after decompiling.
From → August 2021 the AAB format must be used for new apps, for updates from → November 2021. Google has increased the size from 100 MB (for APK) to 150 MB for AAB. However, as far as I know, AABs cannot be decompiled.
Hence my question: Does the AI2 size limit remain at 30 MB for aia (after AABs become mandatory)?
If so, I would have to switch to Android Studio, which after Xcode & Swift would be another (maybe) too big challenge (for a musician).
Or is there any other way to solve this problem?
I do not want to download the audio files at the first start and thus make them accessible without a rooted device.
AABs are also ZIP files, but some of the content is in a binary form. I expect it would be possible to build a simple tool to amend the AAB after creation to add more assets. @Diego do you have thoughts on this?
If I worked at Google, I would say that the solution to that problem is using the Play Asset Delivery. It basically allows to just include the source code in the AAB, and then Google Play will automatically pull the assets from their CDN.
However, this "might" not fit for App Inventor, because it would need to totally change how assets work with the core system, and lots of things can easily go wrong (starting with extensions, for example).
Working on this feature, I had to "manually build" ABBs. So, in theory, it is possible to decompile an ABB and put assets into it later. I would have to make some tests and a tutorial (because you have to run a few tools), but it should be possible.
In the meantime, can you try opening the ABB, going to the base/ directory, and placing those assets into the assets/ folder? And then just sign it with jarsigner (these are the arguments it requires).
Sorry for the late reply. I had little time and haven't worked with jarsigner yet.
I created a new AAB of one of my PlayStore apps
added a large file (10 MB) to the assets
signed the AAB with jarsigner
(jarsigner -verbose -sigalg SHA256withRSA -digestalg SHA-256 -keystore See.keystore Sea.aab androidkey) and
uploaded the AAB as an → internal test track in the Play Store (successfully).
This was accepted without any problems. So far so good. Then I downloaded the → "signed, universal APK" (from the Play Store) and tried installing the APK. Result: → App was not installed. Strange!
I then tried to delete the → "META-INF" directory beforehand. Same result.
What was the specific error encountered when installing the APK? If you are installing via adb at the console, you should get an error message that indicates the issue. If you check inside of the APK it should have the META-INF/ directory with the index of the APK and its signature as signed using the keystore known by Google.
If you want, please privately send me the two APK files (production and beta test) and I can see if there are any particular differences causing the issue.
The production version is about 50MB and the test tack version is about 12MB (because this was only for testing purposes). Tomorrow I will prepare a smaller APK with which the update works and one that will be generated from the AAB by Google and send it to you via PM (links to GDrive).
@Diego I built the AAB with Kodular, because the previous version was also built with Kodular and I don't want to change the packageName for AI2 (package="com.bodymindpower.xyz).
I moved some posts to this new topic because time is running out. There are only 3 weeks left.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a (practicable) solution) for this yet.
My tutorial How to build a big app will then be out of date and no longer applicable (Nov 2021 at the latest).
I really hope that I will get a solution / idea for this, especially from @ewpatton and / or @Diego.
I likely won't have time to address this until after the next release goes out. If you want to get a jump start on it, you may want to take a look at how Diego implemented the signing in the Java code and reproduce that at the terminal.
