This is an expermental utility to create a flashable ZIP containing a number of Android application packages (.apk files) with the intention that the ZIP can be flashed in addition to a custom ROM to augment the available system applications.

The rationale for this is two-fold:

• to help automate installation of a bespoke application collection
• to consume free space on the /system partition rather than /data so that end-user space isn't wasted.

The MIT License applies to this work; please refer to the LICENSE file.

The ZIP can be prepared either on a rooted Android device or by any user on Linux (root is not required on Linux). In both cases, the zip and aapt (Android Application Packaging Tool) commands are required.

The aapt is part of the Android Development Toolkit (ADT). It can, however, be obtained without the overhead of the full ADT. See this post for more information. In summary, for Arch Linux:

$ sudo pacman -S lib32-{glibc,gcc-libs,zlib}
$ curl -J -O 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnlane/android_apkzip/master/adb-binaries-linux-1.0.32.tar.gz'
$ tar xf adb-binaries-linux-1.0.32.tar.gz

This assumes that the multilib repository must be enabled in /etc/pacman.conf. It installs 32-bit versions of aapt, adb and fastboot.

Alternatively, there is the AUR package android-sdk-platform-tools.

Flashing the ZIP requires a custom recovery or root access and a tool like FlashFire.

The script can be used on either Linux or Android. However, if using Android, consider the following points:

• Ensure the filesystem is not mounted noexec (e.g. use /data/local/tmp).
• Should curl, used in the following examples, terminate with a SSL certificate verification error, try adding a -k option.
• The location of the sh shell differs between Linux and Android. The script contains two shebang lines - the first for Linux and the second for Android. On Android, remove the Linux shebang so that the Android one will be used. One way to do this is sed -i -n -e '2,$p' edgar.sh.
• The shell tries to write temporary files to /data/local which requires root privileges. For this reason only the script must be run as root. This is discussed at https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/156719. A remedy would be welcome!

Create a working directory and place the .apk files in subdirectories as follows:

• apks placed into an app subdirectory will install into /system/app
• apks placed into a priv-app subdirectory will be installed into /system/priv-app on Android versions 4.4 and above (app will be used on earlier versions)

Then, from the working directory, run the script:

$ ./edgar.sh

If the aadb tool is installed to the same working directory then start it with an augmented path:

$ PATH=".:$PATH" ./edgar.sh

To run with root privileges (e.g. on Android):

$ su -c ./edgar.sh

The output of the script is a file edgar.zip in the same directory.

First create a new, empty working directory structure and enter it:

$ mkdir -p edgar_workingcopy/{,priv-}app && cd edgar_workingcopy

Obtain the edgar.sh script

$ curl -J -O 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnlane/android_apkzip/master/edgar.sh'
$ chmod 700 edgar.sh

Obtain prerequisites

$ curl -J 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnlane/android_apkzip/master/adb-binaries-linux-1.0.32.tar.gz' | tar xzf -

Verify the directory contents:

$ ls
aapt  adb  app edgar.sh fastboot  lib priv-app

Copy the desired .apk files into the app and/or priv-app subdirectories as appropriate. Then run the script:

$ PATH=".:$PATH" ./edgar.sh

Upload the produced edgar.zip to an Android device:

$ adb push edgar.zip /storage/sdcard0/Download

Apply it using FlashFire or another ZIP-flashing method.

Custom scripts can be provided as custom_preinstall.sh and custom_postinstall.sh which are applied before and after the apk installation. An example script is given as examples/custom_preinstall.sh which deletes some stock applications before alternatives are installed. The optional custom scripts, if required, should be supplied in the root of the working directory.

Some applications don't perform properly when not installed on /data. Most notable in this respect is FlashFire.

The following extra utilities are included:

• get_apk downloads .apk files from remote file server into current directory, expected to be the relevant app or priv-app subdirectory of the working directory where edgar.sh will be run.
• pull_apk downloads .apk files from /data/app (requires adb).
• install_apk installs .apk files into /data/app. The given pacakges are downloaed from a remote file server into a local cache (requires adb).

The get_apk can be used to populate the app or priv-app directories. Given a file, apk_list, containing the apk names in the relevant app directory:

(cd app; ../get_apk < apk_list)

An example is provided in examples/apk_list. Empty lines, whitespace and comments (any text beginning with # through to the end of the line) are ignored.

This work follows a learning exercise to understand the structure of a flashable ZIP and builds upon the ideas presented in this example which is where the original script name, edgar.sh comes from.

The original source of the adb binaries package is:

https://android.izzysoft.de/downloads.php?file=adb-binaries-linux-1.0.32.tar.gz