pack

Introduction: 🤖→📦 | Pack Android Resources into APKs/AABs from WebAssembly without Studio or the SDK

Tags:

xtab-xTag-

Portable Asset Compiler Kit

→ 📦

"pack" can compile and sign APKs and Google Play app bundles without requiring native software like Android Studio or the SDK Build Tools.

It runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, the Web, or as part of your application via a library.

Run on the web, callable from Javascript.
Run natively on Android devices.
Do not depend at runtime on Java, OpenSSL, the Android SDK, or the presence of android.jar.
Build artifacts in-memory without relying a filesystem.
Be written only using public information - all format knowledge is reversed from AOSP code and hex-dumping output from build tools.

Currently, pack is being developed for compiling Wear OS Watch Face Format packages in the browser. This is the starting point because they are sets of resources without any compiled Java code in the final APK.

This project provides implementations of Zip alignment, ResChunk XML encoding, ProtoXML encoding, resources.arsc and resources.pb encoding, as well as JAR Signing and the APK Signature Scheme v2 and v3.

Use

...as a CLI

pack can be used in place of aapt2 etc. on desktop machines. After cloning the repo:

sh
$ cargo run -p pack-cli ./watchface ./package
# Will generate both package.apk and package.aab.
# Both will be signed using a random testing key/certificate.
# For custom signing, pass a .pem file as a third CLI argument.

...as a Javascript module

pack can be embedded in a website to dynamically compile and sign APKs and Android App Bundles for Google Play without installing native software like Android Studio or the Android SDK. It is tested to work on recent versions of Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox. First, compile for web:

sh
$ wasm-pack build --target web ./pack-wasm
# Generates ./pack-wasm/pkg/pack_wasm.js as well as TypeScript types

Which can then be used like so:

js
import init, { build } from "./pack_wasm.js";

await init();

// Returns a base-64 encoded file, which is easy to download
// using browser Blob URL APIs.
const result_b64 = build({
  manifest_b64: "...", // base-64 encoded AndroidManifest.xml
  resources: [
    {
      subdirectory: "drawable",
      name: "preview.png",
      contents_b64: "...", // base-64 encoded PNG file
    }
  ],
  combined_pem_string: "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----...", // A .pem file containing both a CERTIFICATE and a PRIVATE KEY
  generate_aab: false // false for APK, true for AAB
})

...as a Rust crate

pack can be used as a Rust library crate.

sh
$ cargo doc -p pack-api --open

Will generate comprehensive documentation on the API for creating packages, which works in a similar way to the Javascript API:

rust
let pkg = Package {
    android_manifest: "<?xml version...".as_bytes(),
    resources: vec![
        FileResource::new("xml".into(), "strings.xml".into(), "<resource>...".as_bytes()),
        FileResource::new("drawable".into(), "image.png".into(), fs::read(...))
    ]
}

// Use placeholder keys for simplicity
let signing_keys = crypto_keys::Keys::generate_random_testing_keys();
let apk_bytes = compile_and_sign_apk(pkg, signing_keys)?;

More advanced usage/behaviour can be achieved by depending on the individual internal crates such as pack-asset-compiler, pack-sign and pack-zip.

...as an on-device compiler for Android

pack can be compiled to run on an Android device, such as a phone or Wear OS watch. The CLI and library crates can be compiled as-is for Android without changes. First, cp -r ./.cargo.example ./.cargo and change the .cargo/config.toml file to point to the Android NDK. There are comments in the file that will help you with this. Then simply compile for Android, push, and run on device. Example using Android Emulator running on an Apple Silicon Mac:

sh
pack % cargo build -p pack-cli --target aarch64-linux-android --release
pack % adb push $(pwd)/target/aarch64-linux-android/release/pack-cli /data/local/tmp/pack-cli
pack % adb push ./some-watchface /data/local/tmp/some-watchface
pack % adb shell
emu64a:/ $ cd data/local/tmp
emu64a:/ $ chmod +x ./pack-cli
emu64a:/ $ ./pack-cli ./some-watchface ./some-watchface.apk
Compiled, aligned & signed successfully!
emu64a:/ $ exit
pack % adb pull /data/local/tmp/some-watchface.apk
pack % adb install ./some-watchface.apk
Performing Streamed Install
Success

If using a real device with 32-bit userspace, such as a Wear OS watch, perform similar steps but replace aarch64-linux-android with armv7-linux-androideabi. Similarly, you can create your own crate that depends on pack-* packages to customise it for your needs, then compile for an Android target tuple, no special setup is required.

Coverage

pack reimplements parts of aapt2 , zipalign , apksigner and bundletool from scratch, and as such is not fully compatible with all of their features. It supports enough to compile basic Wear OS watch faces as a proof of concept, and aims to develop further support.

You can help by contributing!

Original tool	Feature	Supported by pack	Note
aapt2	APK Resource tables	✅
aapt2	APK XML encoding	✅
aapt2	String tables	✅
aapt2	Multiple-language values	🚩	Only supports single-language `strings.xml` files
aapt2	Density-dependent resources	🚩	Only supports `drawable` (eg. no `drawable-xhdpi`)
zipalign	Zip file 4-byte alignment	✅
apksigner	APK Signature Scheme v1	✅	Required for AAB
apksigner	APK Signature Scheme v2	✅
apksigner	APK Signature Scheme v3	✅
apksigner	APK Signature Scheme v4	🚩	Not yet implemented
bundletool	AAB Resource tables	✅
bundletool	AAB XML encoding	✅
bundletool	Resource qualifiers	🚩	Same as APK, eg. `values/`, but no `values-b+es/`