Things I Keep Forgetting - Assemble vs Bundle and bundletools

With the introduction of Android App Bundle format (.aab) things are improving for the user of Android apps. However, this also means a more complicated development process for the developers.

Usually you only need one command to create an APK which is the assemble command, for example if we want to build an APK for debug build type:

$ ./gradlew :app:assembleDebug

However, since we now have an Android App Bundle format, to generate the full or universal APK, we need to run the bundle command:

$ ./gradlew :app:bundleDebug

And then make the universal apk via bundletool:

$ bundletool build-apks --bundle=app/build/outputs/bundle/debug/app-debug.aab --output=app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apks --mode=universal

But then, we still can createa an APK using the assemble command, but this will only generate the APK for the base module.

So, what does it mean for us if we don't have any dynamic features? Well, it means that we can use the assemble command.

It will be much more simple and faster

Bonus

You can actually create a universal APK with Gradle task in newer versions of AGP, for example, creating a univeral debug build type APK:

$ ./gradlew :app:packageDebugUniversalApk