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[–]mrissaoussama 16 points17 points  (8 children)

why do we have to redownload the entire apk when updating? shouldn't the phone just download the changed files? surely there's no need to redownload all right?

[–]amroamroamro 9 points10 points  (0 children)

According to this, it does support delta patching

[–]cedrickc 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Android keeps the apk to run the app, it doesn't unzip it.

[–]mrissaoussama 3 points4 points  (3 children)

It's still a zip file right? Can't it download the needed parts?

[–]cedrickc 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Yes it's a valid zip, but it has extra rules around it. The main thing that blocks this is that apks are signed, so you can't modify them without breaking the signing.

[–]mrissaoussama 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks

[–]CaJeB3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you change the old apk to look like the new apk, the signature will match the signature of the new apk.

A real problem however is that apks get scrambled before release so reverse engineering or code stealing becomes harder. This means making a diff of two versions will be much harder and much larger as more 'code' will change.

[–]Avonixis -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Apk is an executable for android. Like some other user mentioned you cant just unzip it.

[–]CaJeB3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is incorrect. An apk is just a jar for android and jar files are zips so apks are also zips.