multidex-maker

A dex tool which ensures the specified class in the specified secondary dex.

Purpose

Because the Android apps usually consist of independent modules, I had modified the dx tool of AOSP to keeping each module in a separate dex, benifits are as follows:

• A small enough main dex to avoid main dex capacity exceeded.
• Improving the startup time of app due to the minimum size of main dex.
• Installing of the secondary dexes is more controllable, so we can do something interesting. (e.g. record load time of each module)

Installation

1. Exec shellscript

./install.sh

2. Modify buildscript

build.gradle

android {
    afterEvaluate {
        tasks.matching {
            it.name.startsWith("dex")
        }.each { dx ->
            if (dx.additionalParameters == null) {
                dx.additionalParameters = []
            }
            dx.additionalParameters += "--main-dex-list=$projectDir/maindexlist.txt".toString()
            dx.additionalParameters += "--secondary-dexes-list=$projectDir/secondarydexeslist.txt".toString()
            dx.additionalParameters += "--minimal-main-dex"
        }
    }
}

3. Add secondarydexeslist.txt

Exmaple:

--secondary-dex-begin    
com/github/jllk/multidex/sample/R
--secondary-dex-end

--secondary-dex-begin    
scala/
--secondary-dex-end

--secondary-dex-begin	
com/github/jllk/multidex/sample/a/
--secondary-dex-end

--secondary-dex-begin
com/github/jllk/multidex/sample/b/
--secondary-dex-end

--secondary-dex-begin
com/github/jllk/multidex/sample/c/
--secondary-dex-end

--secondary-dex-begin
com/github/jllk/multidex/sample/d/
--secondary-dex-end

4. Apply multidex-installer and multidex-hook

build.gradle

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    compile "com.github.jllk:multidex-installer:0.0.4-beta@aar"
    compile "com.github.jllk:multidex-hook:0.0.1-beta@aar"
}

Application:

class SampleApp extends Application {

  override def attachBaseContext(base: Context): Unit = {
    super.attachBaseContext(base)
    JLLKMultiDexInstaller.installOne(this, 2) // for R
    JLLKMultiDexInstaller.installRange(this, 3, 4) // for scala

    JLLKMultiDexHook.lazyInstall(SampleModuleMgr.getConfig)
  }
}

Outcomes

After building we get main dex and secondary dexes in order, and we can load part of them or all:

> du -sh *.dex
40K	classes.dex
4.0K	classes2.dex
7.0M	classes3.dex
1.7M	classes4.dex
12K	classes5.dex
12K	classes6.dex
12K	classes7.dex
12K	classes8.dex
28K	classes9.dex

See also

multidex-installer: https://github.com/JLLK/multidex-installer

multidex-hook: https://github.com/JLLK/multidex-hook

multidex-sample: https://github.com/JLLK/multidex-sample

License

This tool is licensed under Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE for details.