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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

thanks for the report back!  I feel your 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.

 Since Intel basically stopped making mobile chips, I was thinking we'd
be able to stop thinking about x86.  But with Android and ChromeOS
merging, I think we unfortunately still do need to support x86.
Orbot/Orfox works well on my Asus Chromebook Flip (which is ARM).


> 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!

Interesting, this has been f-droid.org policy for the longest time: one
APK per app.


> 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!

Yeah for avoiding pre-mature optimization!

.hc

> 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
> 
> 

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