Meteor Guide: Submitting an app using Crosswalk to the Play Store

I’ve added Crosswalk to my app recently and am a bit struggling with submitting this version to the Play Store. I’ve learned that Crosswalk changes the build process, so it creates two .apk files instead of one. In the Meteor guide, there is a section about it:

but unfortunately, it mostly refers to this documentation:

https://developer.android.com/google/play/publishing/multiple-apks.html

This docs contain a lot of information, e.g. that the version codes have to differ and also the configuration support has to be slightly different. However, this doc won’t tell me which of these prerequisites have already been fulfilled by Meteor’s build process and which not. Is there any detailed instruction on the post-build steps required to upload the apk’s to the Play Store?

I’ve also noticed that the non-Crosswalk build’s apk creates binaries for armeabi, armeabi-v7a, and x86. But the new Crosswalk build exports only two apks, and the Play Store developer console says that one fits to armeabi-v7a and the other to x86. Does the missing armeabi matter, or is this only for very old devices?

The version codes are already different! :slight_smile:

After sign & zipalign, you can just upload those 2 apks to the google play through the “advanced mode”, using the top right button in the APK section of your app in the Google Play Developer Console.

Thanks for your feedback. I’ve uploaded both apks to the app store, and it seemed to work fine. However, today a user with a Galaxy Young 2 Duos tried to download the app, but if wasn’t offered for this device. Do you happen to know why? Maybe it’s the armeabi thing?

Mmm this is scary D:

I’ve just checked the devices compability list (on Google Developer console > your app > APK section > supported devices view list) and the Samsung Galaxy Young 2 is there! Isn’t it a Cortex A7, right? I think it should be supported by the armeabi-v7a.apk :confused:

It could be that the device was a Galaxy Young Duos, without the 2. This one is using a Cortex A5. Is there any way to support these older devices, too? Without Crosswalk, the build exports for both armeabi and armeabi-v7a. But with Crosswalk, I only get the latter.

BTW: In my console, I can’t see the Galaxy Young 2 either. It’s in the list of unsupported devices, but not in the list of supported devices. Strange. In total, my app supports 8842 devices.

I think the devices has an unsopported version of Android :worried:

Since Meteor 1.2, Cordova is version 5-something which supports Android API-Levels 14 - 23
(14 === Android 4.0)
Ref: https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/guide/platforms/android/

In total, my app supports 8842 devices.

That’s strange, i support 10896 devices

Thanks for these insights!

I’m still on Meteor 1.2, are you using 1.3? Maybe I have to tweak my Android build settings somehow? AFAIR, I did not change anything, I’m just using the defaults.

Yes, I think this is quite strange. I always thought that the main idea of Crosswalk was to support older devices with weak default browsers. Not supporting v5 and v6 processors seems to be a downgrade to me.

I support 9869 devices here, build with crosswalk generates x86 and armv7 executables. I also found that sometimes I have to remove all generated files from .meteor/local then run the build multiple times for it to generate the apks.

So I am wondering what I am doing wrong? It just did a build. Maybe it’s because I am on Meteor 1.2?

Maybe, I’m using the lastest 1.3 version.