NativeScript / NativeScript/android

Question about necessity of multiple AAR files in npm package - impacting yarn zero installs

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C++
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

I'm using yarn zero installs and need to store npm packages compressed in the repository. However, the NativeScript Android npm package contains three large AAR files that are causing issues with GitHub's 100MB upload limit:

  • framework/app/libs/runtime-libs/nativescript-optimized-with-inspector.aar (~32MB)
  • framework/app/libs/runtime-libs/nativescript-optimized.aar (~30MB)
  • framework/app/libs/runtime-libs/nativescript-regular.aar (~32MB)

Together with all other files these exceed the 100MB limit, making it impossible to commit the compressed packages to the repository.

Question: Are all three of these AAR files actually necessary? Could some of them be made optional or combined to reduce the package size for users who want to use yarn zero installs?

This would greatly help developers who need to maintain reproducible builds with yarn zero installs but are hitting the repository size limits due to these large runtime files.

Another affected NPM package is @nativescript/types-android.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by examining the three AAR files under framework/app/libs/runtime-libs and how they are referenced by the NativeScript Android npm package. Determine whether each runtime variant is required, including for @nativescript/types-android, and define done as reducing package size without breaking supported Android builds or yarn zero-install packaging.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
android, javascript
Domain
build-system, mobile
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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