Gradle native libraries not found on device but present in apk

Question

My application uses Here SDK and Twilio SDK. Both uses native libraries (Here SDK with native libraries locally plugged in from /libs and /jniLibs folders, Twilio SDK plugged in from jCenter). But on Android 5.1 Here SDK throws exception "MISSING LIBRARIES: libMAPSJNI.so" although this library present in result APK. I opened folder where my program is installed on device and compared content in two cases: with or without Twilio SDK. The difference is that when connected Twilio API folder /lib is a file, and for obvious reasons, the loader can not see inside it native libraries needed initialize Here SDK. If remove the Twilio gradle dependency the assembly occurs normally. What could be a reason and how to fix it? If needed I can attach test project with these libs

Answer 1

You need to modify your build.gradle like this:

android {
    (...)
    splits {
        abi {
            enable true
            reset()
            include 'armeabi-v7a'
            universalApk false
        }
    }
    (...)
}

It's probably because Twilio SDK supports x86 and HERE SDK currently doesn't support it.

Answer 2

By defining a splits block you can tell Gradle to create APKs for each listed ABI:

include "armeabi", "armeabi-v7a", "x86", "mips"

Alternatively you can include all desired ABIs into one APK by adding the following filter:

android {
(...)
defaultConfig {
    (...)
    ndk {
        // allow only 32bit *.so libs
        abiFilters "armeabi", "armeabi-v7a", "x86", "mips"
    }
}

}

Both approaches will exclude 64bit functionality that might clash with the 32bit HERE SDK, but the latter will support more devices with a single APK.

Some libraries, like the new Android Room Persistence library, add 32bit flavors along with the two 64bit ABI flavors arm64-v8a and x86_64. Since HERE SDK at the moment only provides a 32bit lib it should be safe to exclude 64bit lib variants. On the other hand it is expected that 64bit devices can gracefully handle 32bit libs.