[rb-general] Reproducible Android apps: resources.arsc

[Torsten Grote]

On 06/18/2018 05:42 PM, Chris Lamb wrote:
> diffoscope could, hypothethically, use an additional tool. Perhaps a
> lower-level one..depends on the actual difference.

The APK files are 18MB in size each (due to support for various CPU
architectures) and I see that you are still using the debian mail
reportbug system. I guess attaching 36MB to an email is a bit much.
Should I just try to find some other place to upload these files for you?

Btw. when trying your online service, I got this error:

---

WARNING: Your kernel does not support memory limit capabilities.
Limitation discarded.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File
"/usr/share/python/trydiffoscope/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/trydiffoscope/compare/tasks.py",
line 59, in execute_diffoscope
    comparison.output += line
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 31:
ordinal not in range(128)

---

Maybe you can still find the uploaded files there ;)

Alternatively, I could also only attach the resources.arsc file instead
of the entire APK.

> Thanks for filing the issue. As it happens, I tend to avoid filing
> "your program is not reproducible" bugs without a more concrete idea of
> the problem simply from a "political" point of view, but YMMV. :)

I tried to get an idea as concrete as possible and only filed the bug
when I couldn't get any further. But if somebody has some better
insights in Android's opaque app building process, I would appreciate
additional hints and also would be happy to add them to the upstream ticket.

Essentially, you run `gradle assembleRelease` and the APK falls out at
the end. Google's own bug tracker doesn't even seem to differentiate for
the individual tool that is involved. I filed the ticket in Android
Public Tracker -> App Development -> Android Studio -> Build which seems
to be the one most appropriate.

Kind Regards,
Torsten