Skip to main content

Building Your Application for Release using Eclipse ADT

After you finish configuring your application you can build it into a release-ready .apk fle that is signed and optimized. The JDK includes the tools for signing the .apk file (Keytool and Jarsigner); the Android SDK includes the tools for compiling and optimizing the .apk file. If you are using Eclipse with the ADT plugin or you are using the Ant build script from the command line, you can automate the entire build process.

In preparation for signing your application, you must first ensure that you have a suitable private key with which to sign. Following Keytool command generates a private key:
$ keytool -genkey -v -keystore my-release-key.keystore
-alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Running the example command above, Keytool prompts you to provide passwords for the keystore and key, and to provide the Distinguished Name fields for your key. It then generates the keystore as a file called my-release-key.keystore. The keystore and key are protected by the passwords you entered. The keystore contains a single key, valid for 10000 days. The alias is a name that you — will use later, to refer to this keystore when signing your application.

The Export Wizard performs all the interaction with the Keytool and Jarsigner for you, which allows you to sign the package using a GUI instead of performing the manual procedures to compile, sign, and align, as discussed above. Once the wizard has compiled and signed your package, it will also perfom package alignment with zipalign. Because the Export Wizard uses both Keytool and Jarsigner, you should ensure that they are accessible on your computer.

To create a signed and aligned APK in Eclipse:
  1. Select the project in the Package Explorer and select File > Export.
  2. Open the Android folder, select Export Android Application, and click Next.The Export Android Application wizard now starts, which will guide you through the process of signing your application, including steps for selecting the private key with which to sign the APK (or creating a new keystore and private key).
  3. Complete the Export Wizard and your application will be compiled, signed, aligned, and ready for distribution.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Find an old archived link on web

In recent past, I'm need of a tool, to which the provider no longer provides the link to download. Previously I've blogged about Openlogic , which serves this purpose. Openlogic contains unofficial fork of the original repository, and to be precise, I haven't found the tool I'm in search of. I found Internet Archive : Wayback Machine , while searching for it. It has got 412 billion stored pages and you may look into older versions of any website or you can get link to any software/tool which used to be a website. All you have to do is, provide a link or part of a link to search. For example, to know how my website used to be in 2013, just type http://www.thechaithanya.com and you can see a calender with some of the dates highlighted, on which they had the snapshot of my website. You can even provide a part of link. For example, to get the link of older version of Android ADT, search using http://dl.google.com/android/adt/* You can find a set of links and...

Setting JVM Heap size at runtime

To set the JVM heap size, compile the program normally. For example, consider Runtime.java program. Compilation: javac Runtime.java Now, to set minimum heap size(let, 16 MB) required by JVM, run the program as follows : java -Xms16m Runtime  We can also restrict maximum size(let 512 MB) utilized by JVM: java -Xmx512m Runtime  Both these options can also be combined to specify upper and lower bounds of JVM heap size: java -Xms16m -Xmx512m Runtime Now you can run a program that requires huge computational space.

Reverse Engineering : Extract contents from .img file

Unyaffs is a program to extract files from a YAFFS2 file system image. Currently it can only extract images created by mkyaffs2image. Download the source from here . Compiling : Extract the contents into a suitable place and run the following command make Usage : unyaffs [options] <image_file_name> [<extract_directory>] Options: -d detection of flash layout, no extraction -b spare contains bad block information -c <chunk size> set chunk size in KByte (default: autodetect, max: 16) -s <spare size> set spare size in Byte (default: autodetect, max: 512) -t list image contents -v verbose output -V print version Source: Official github repository