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[.NET 10] investigate how to ship fewer copies of Mono.Android.dll #9606
Description
Android framework version
Other
Affected platform version
.NET 10
Description
Right now we have this many Mono.Android.dll
- ref pack, reference assembly for
Mono.Android.dll - android-arm
Mono.Android.dll - android-arm64
Mono.Android.dll - android-x86
Mono.Android.dll - android-x64
Mono.Android.dll
Where the last four are identical, because it's managed code and not tied to a RID at all. Ideally, we could reduce this to 1 ref assembly and 1 runtime assembly.
This is going to get even worse if we support multiple runtimes in the future: NativeAOT, etc.
Steps to Reproduce
dotnet workload install android- Look at the
Mono.Android.dllfiles on disk.
Did you find any workaround?
n/a
Activity
[-][.NET 10] investigate how to ship less copies of `Mono.Android.dll`[/-][+][.NET 10] investigate how to ship fewer copies of `Mono.Android.dll`[/+]jpobst commentedon Dec 11, 2024
Also with Google now releasing APIs twice a year, it's going to get worse due to supporting multiple API Levels per .NET version.
jonpryor commentedon Jan 15, 2025
I thought I had asked/commented somewhere, "Is there a reason for us to have per-RID binaries?" Alas, I can't find me actually asking that, but it's still pertinent.
After some discussions with Peppers, we thought of a reason to have per-RID binaries: ReadyToRun places native code within the assembly, and we may want to provide ReadyToRun images within
Java.Interop.dllandMono.Android.dllto assist app startup times even in Debug configurations.Meaning we probably will want per-RID copies of assemblies.
What needs exploration is whether each separate supported runtime will require different per-RID assemblies. If we assume builds of
Mono.Android.dllfor android-arm, android-arm64, android-x86, android-x64, and that each such build contains a ReadyToRun image, can that same binary assembly used by all of MonoVM, CoreCLR, and NativeAOT? If yes, then we can continue to ship 5 copies, and not (4 {RIDs} * 3 {runtimes})+1 = 13 copies.pjcollins commentedon May 28, 2025
Improvements were made for this in #10038, though the questions/concerns raised in #9606 (comment) may warrent some additional investigation in the future.