Justin's Wiki - Overlay Mechanism

Overlay Mechanism

The Android overlay mechanism allows the framework and package resources to be customized without changing the base packages. The customizable resourses fall into the following categories:

Configurations (string, bool, bool-array)
Localization (string, string-array)
UI Appearance (color, drawable, layout, style, theme, animation)
Raw resources (audio, video, xml)

For detailed introduction on Android application resources, please refer to: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/available-resources.html

Contents [Hide]

1 Add Overlay Directories for Product

1.1 Product Overlays vs Device Overlays
1.2 Change the makefile to add overlays
1.3 Create resources under the overlay directory

2 Determine the overlays for a product

3 Check the resource in APK

3.1 Using AAPT
3.2 Using apktools
3.3 Using dumpres

4 More on AAPT and Overlay

4.1 How overlay works
4.2 Add extra resources in Overlay

Add Overlay Directories for Product

Product Overlays vs Device Overlays

There are two types of overaly directories that affect a product:

PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS: used by a particular product
DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS: used several products that share a common device model

The PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS will override the DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS if they contain same resources, the behavior is defined by:

build/core/package.mk (Line: 93)

LOCAL_RESOURCE_DIR := \
  $(wildcard $(foreach dir, $(PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS), \
    $(addprefix $(dir)/, $(LOCAL_RESOURCE_DIR)))) \
  $(wildcard $(foreach dir, $(DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS), \
    $(addprefix $(dir)/, $(LOCAL_RESOURCE_DIR)))) \
  $(LOCAL_RESOURCE_DIR)

Change the makefile to add overlays

To add an overlay directory to a product, change the product configuration makefile (for example: device/vendor-name/device-name/product-name.mk) to add the following lines:

PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS :=  device/vendor-name/device-name/product-name/overlay $(PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS)

or:

DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS :=  device/vendor-name/device-name/common/overlay $(DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS)

If multiple overlay directories are required to be added, separate them with blank charactors. The directories defined first in the line will override the following directories if they contain the same set of resources.

Create resources under the overlay directory

To overlay the resources in a base package, the subdirectory containing the overlay resources under the overlay directory, must has the same path as the base package resource directory relative to the Android project root.

For example, if we want to overlay the resources under the base package directory:

packages/apps/Settings/res/

we need to create the directory:

<overlay-dir>/packages/apps/Settings/res/

and in the directory, put the overlay resources in the files with the same path and file names as where they are defined in the base package.

Note that:

For color, bool, string, array, style/theme types, the resource values are identifed by their keys, so for these types, there is no need to put the resources in a file with the same name as in the original base package.
For layout, animation, picture drawables and raw types, the resources are indentifed by their file name, and overlay for these resources should keep the file name same as in the base packages.

Determine the overlays for a product

Because there may exist multiple overlay directories for a product, sometimes, it is required to determine all these directories used by the product.

1. First, launch a full build on the target product.

2. Put the following 2 lines in packages/apps/Settings/Android.mk:

$(warning product overlay $(PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS))
$(error device overlay $(DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS))

3. run the following commands:

cd $ANDROID_SRC_ROOT
. build/envsetup.sh
lunch <product-config>
cd packages/apps/Settings
mm

4. The build system of Android will print the the two variables and exit:

packages/apps/Settings/Android.mk:6: product overlay device/vendor-name/device-name/product-name/overlay vendor/vendor-name/media/common/overlay
packages/apps/Settings/Android.mk:7: *** device overlay device/vendor-name/device-name/common/overlay device/vendor-name/omap4/overlay device/vendor-name/common/overlay. Stop.

Check the resource in APK

After changed the overlay resources and built the target packages, sometimes we need to check if the overlay directory took effects and the values are changed in the finally generated apks.

Using AAPT

Run the following aapt commands on the final APK packages:

Usage:
 aapt l[ist] [-v] [-a] file.{zip,jar,apk}
   List contents of Zip-compatible archive.

 aapt d[ump] [--values] WHAT file.{apk} [asset [asset ...]]
   badging          Print the label and icon for the app declared in APK.
   permissions      Print the permissions from the APK.
   resources        Print the resource table from the APK.
   configurations   Print the configurations in the APK.
   xmltree          Print the compiled xmls in the given assets.
   xmlstrings       Print the strings of the given compiled xml assets.

For example:

1. To dump string, bool values:

aapt dump resources Settings.apk

2. To dump a raw xml file:

aapt dump xmltree Settings.apk res/xml/appwidget_info.xml

3. To dump the current configurations/localizations:

aapt dump configurations Settings.apk

Using apktools

Reference: http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/

Usage:

Apktool v1.5.0.5a056e3 - a tool for reengineering Android apk files
Copyright 2010 Ryszard Wi??niewski <brut.alll@gmail.com>
with smali v1.3.4-ibot8, and baksmali v1.3.4-ibot8
Updated by iBotPeaches <connor.tumbleson@gmail.com>
Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

Usage: apktool [-q|--quiet OR -v|--verbose] COMMAND [...]

COMMANDs are:

    d[ecode] [OPTS] <file.apk> [<dir>]
        Decode <file.apk> to <dir>.

        OPTS:

        -s, --no-src
            Do not decode sources.
        -r, --no-res
            Do not decode resources.
        -d, --debug
            Decode in debug mode. Check project page for more info.
        -f, --force
            Force delete destination directory.
        -t <tag>, --frame-tag <tag>
            Try to use framework files tagged by <tag>.
        --keep-broken-res
            Use if there was an error and some resources were dropped, e.g.:
            "Invalid config flags detected. Dropping resources", but you
            want to decode them anyway, even with errors. You will have to
            fix them manually before building.

    b[uild] [OPTS] [<app_path>] [<out_file>]
        Build an apk from already decoded application located in <app_path>.

        It will automatically detect, whether files was changed and perform
        needed steps only.

        If you omit <app_path> then current directory will be used.
        If you omit <out_file> then <app_path>/dist/<name_of_original.apk>
        will be used.

        OPTS:

        -f, --force-all
            Skip changes detection and build all files.
        -d, --debug
            Build in debug mode. Check project page for more info.

    if|install-framework <framework.apk> [<tag>]
        Install framework file to your system.

For additional info, see: https://github.com/iBotPeaches/brut.apktool
For smali/baksmali info, see: http://code.google.com/p/smali/

Using dumpres

For more readable dumping messages for complex values, we can use some other tool, such as dumpres tool.

More on AAPT and Overlay

How overlay works

While building the package APKs, the overlay directories are passed to aapt command lines using -S options in the same order as they are defined in PRODUCT_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS and DEVICE_PACKAGE_OVERLAYS.

For example, while building the Settings APK, the following command are executed:

out/host/linux-x86/bin/aapt package -u  -z \
         -M packages/apps/Settings/AndroidManifest.xml \
         -S device/vendor-name/device-name/product-name/overlay/packages/apps/Settings/res \
         -S vendor/vendor-name/media/common/overlay/packages/apps/Settings/res -S packages/apps/Settings/res \
         -I out/target/common/obj/APPS/framework-res_intermediates/package-export.apk \
         --min-sdk-version 16 --target-sdk-version 16 --product default \
         --version-code 16 --version-name 4.1.2-eng.xxxx.20121121.152327 \
         -F out/target/product/product-name/obj/APPS/Settings_intermediates/package.apk

Note: some overlay directories that don't contain the Settings resources will be filtered first, and do not appear in the above command line.

Add extra resources in Overlay

Though not recommanded, we can add new resources in overlay directory, for example, if base package Settings doesn't define a bool value with key no_such_key, we can add it in the overlay file bool.xml like this:

<resources>
    ... ...
    <add-resource type="bool" name="no_such_key"/>
    <bool name="no_such_key">true</bool>
    ... ...
</resource>

If the add-resource line is missing, aapt tool will complain while creating the apk file:

device/vendor-name/device-name/product-name/overlay/packages/apps/Settings/res/values/bools.xml:30: error: Resource at no_such_key appears in overlay but \
not in the base package; use <add-resource> to add.

Another way to avoid the complaint is to run aapt with the option:

--auto-add-overlay
    Automatically add resources that are only in overlays.

Note: For picture drawables, we can always add new images in the overlay directory without extra work.