energy-efficient-bok/QA_Android_Profiler.md

Using Android Studio Profiler

Preparing debuggable release build

It's important to use performance profiling on release builds with all optimizations on. Unfortunately, Android Studio Profiled requires your app to be debuggable to use it. So we can't just build a release and assume it would work.

We need to make a debuggable release build. That requires a patching a few files.

AndroidManifest.xml

Add debuggable:true to the <application/> tag of android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml.

diff --git a/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml
b/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml index f4ceb435..4b6108a6 100644 ---
a/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml +++
b/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml @@ -26,6 +26,7 @@

     <application
             android:allowBackup="true"
+            android:debuggable="true"
             android:label="@string/app_name"
             android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
             android:theme="@style/AppTheme"

build.gradle

Linter will complain about the attribute we added, so we need to continue building anyway.

diff --git a/android/app/build.gradle b/android/app/build.gradle
index 93ad2080..161b5bb5 100644
--- a/android/app/build.gradle
+++ b/android/app/build.gradle
@@ -186,6 +186,10 @@ android {
         }
     }

+    lintOptions {
+        abortOnError false
+    }
+
     sourceSets { main { jniLibs.srcDirs 'libs' } }
 }

Keystore

Create a keystore in Android studio with the following parameters like in android/gradle.properties file.

Try making a build

make prod-build-android

pushd android && ./gradlew assembleRelease && popd

adb install -r ./android/app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

Android Studio: Analyze APK project

1. "File -> Profile or Debug APK..."

2. Select ./android/app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

3. Select "app-release" in the projec view. "View -> Open Module Settings".

4. Go to "Dependencies" and select Module SDK.

Android Studio: Profiling

rebuild the app if neeeded

adb install -r ./android/app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

"Run -> Progfile 'app-release'" will show a profiler.

Android studio will copy this APK file to a separate directory, so it will quickly become outdated. That is not a problem, because if we install a more recent version of it via ADB, Android Studio will fail to install it's copy on top and show an error dialog. Just click "Cancel" there.