[guardian-dev] Orbot v15.2.0 RC8 + fun dev notes of pain!

[Nathan of Guardian]

I've learned a few things over the last few days:

1) If you release an APK with only ARM-compiled native NDK libraries in
it, Google Play will still offer it to ATOM/x86 devices. These
apparently have some partial crappy ARM-emulator mode that doesn't seem
to work at all. WTF.

2) Regarding #1, if you think you should do some sort of multi-APK
release for different native architectures to reduce binary size ....
DON'T!

3) Unless you have time to really test all the different variants of ARM
targets (armeabi, armeabi-v7a arm64-v8a) using the NDK, then don't get
fancy. Just target armeabi. 

4) NDK toolchain 4.8 works just fine for building Tor, etc, but for some
reason, I decided to switch to 4.9. Bad idea.... again, all worked fine
on my series of Android 4, 5, 6 test devices, but given the crazy
variety of 10,000+ devices out there, don't push your luck with native
code.

Anyhow, just wanted to share some of the pain and suffering I have been
going through, mostly due to my own stupid ambition to release smaller
binaries that run faster. Three cheers to bloat and stability!

APK: https://guardianproject.info/releases/Orbot-v15.2.0-RC-8-multi.apk
(.asc)

/** 15.2.0 RC 8 / 7 November 2016 /
34079c7a159a94eb738c0410b4642394d712c44e **/

540db0f revert back to NDK toolchain 4.8 since it is more stable
73e9ac8 just go back to basic arm and x86 builds other builds and new
ndk toolchain is causing crashes
fd92359 improvements to app selection UI for better layout and error
handling
7bbfd4e tune line length here for other locales
e744389 improve UI setup here for list to reduce NPE crashes
dedf213 make sure browser intent exists before you open it for some
reason, we see a lot of random crashes here do people really run d

/** 15.2.0 RC 7 / 4 November 2016 /
eb45d61dc90a31d41d33ad6be7cfed3e022284b7 **/

b147d5d update tor binary flag for new SSL
eb45d61 update to 15.2.0-RC-7-multi for new OpenSSL 1.0.2j
7dd82ae updated OpenSSL string in about UI to 1.0.2j
693bc9e update openssl to OpenSSL_1_0_2j
523b7b0 update for arm-x86 joint build 15.2.0-RC-6-multi
0efbb17 update for new joint arm+x86 build release


-- 
  Nathan of Guardian
  nathan at guardianproject.info