Feature Request: Add native support for Android App Bundles / Dynamic Delivery

Description of the problem / feature request:

Add the ability to build and publish Android APKs using the new App Bundles / Dynamic Delivery android features. See:

https://developer.android.com/platform/technology/app-bundle https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle/dynamic-delivery

Feature requests: what underlying problem are you trying to solve with this feature?

Use Bazel with App Bundles / Dynamic Delivery

What operating system are you running Bazel on?

MacOs or Linux

What’s the output of bazel info release?

Any

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

https://developer.android.com/platform/technology/app-bundle https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle/dynamic-delivery

[ahumesky]

Hi all,

Our approach to solving this issue is for us to provide a rule called android_application that replaces android_binary and supports building Android App bundles. The android_application rule will support configuration splits, as well as feature splits for assets and native libraries. We anticipate publishing it with enough time for adoption before the Play Store deadline.

If you would like to switch to using android_application and Bazel to generate an Android App Bundle from an existing Bazel target that uses android_binary:

1. Replace android_binary with android_application.
2. Move srcs (if any) to a new android_library target, then add that library to the deps of the android_application (android_applcation does not accept source files directly).
3. Set bundle_config_file to a .pb.json bundle configuration, as per https://developer.android.com/studio/build/building-cmdline#bundleconfig to configure the splits for the application.

We’ll publish additional documentation and examples when we publish the android_applcation rule.

[ahumesky]

Hi all, I’ve published the preview to the pre-alpha branch here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_android/tree/pre-alpha

Note that to get the bundletool dependencies, you’ll need to add rules_jvm_external to your workspace file if it’s not there already, and there’s some workspace setup now in @rules_android//:defs.bzl:

http_archive(
    name = "rules_jvm_external",
    strip_prefix = "rules_jvm_external-fa73b1a8e4846cee88240d0019b8f80d39feb1c3",
    url = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jvm_external/archive/fa73b1a8e4846cee88240d0019b8f80d39feb1c3.zip",
)

http_archive(
    name = "rules_android",
    urls = ["https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_android/archive/5c8bdd44193894594fa01fd527c5cf3af17e7652.zip"],
    strip_prefix = "rules_android-5c8bdd44193894594fa01fd527c5cf3af17e7652",
)
load("@rules_android//:defs.bzl", "rules_android_workspace")
rules_android_workspace()