Is there a detailed description of optimizations in the Android build process?

Posted by Daniel Lew on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Daniel Lew
Published on 2010-03-29T20:30:25Z Indexed on 2010/03/29 20:33 UTC
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build-process

I've been curious as to all the optimizations that go into the building of an .apk. I'm curious because of two things I've tried in the past to bring down the size of my .apk:

I have had a few large json assets in projects before, as well as a static sqlite database. I tried bringing down the size of the apk by gzipping them before the build process, but the resulting size is exactly the same.
I just today tried pngcrush on my /drawable/ folders. The resulting build was exactly the same size as before.

I would think that perhaps #1 could be explained by the zip process, but simply zipping the /drawable/ folders in #2 result in different-sized files. Perhaps the build process runs something akin to pngcrush?

Regardless, I was wondering if anyone knew where to find a detailed description of all the optimizations in the Android build process. I don't want to waste my time trying to optimize what is already automated, and also I think it'd help my understanding of the resulting apk. Does anyone know if this is documented anywhere?

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