Integrate an Android app (.apk) into an existing Android project

Question

Here\'s the use case:

A friend and I are building an Android app and along with it want to integrate a game. The core of the app has been built in Eclipse but we ar

Answer 1

You may consider building dependency Project A as a JAR and include that JAR-file to the build path of your dependent Project B.

To do that in Eclipse yo should click Export > Java > JAR > { Select project & unselect AndroidManifest.xml } > Finish

If you do not exclude AndroidManifest.xml from your Project A, you will get an issue saying there are duplicating manifest files described here.

Also you might get the following error:

conversion to dalvik format failed with error 1

To fix that just clean & rebuild your project

I tried that for two projects having reference for the same version of Android SDK and it worked. Note that if you need to run activity from the Project A you also need to declare it in the manifest of the Project B

Answer 2

A project written in App Inventor cannot be exported into Eclipse.

The created .apk file is not a binary file. It is a ZIP archive of several files and folders, but none of them is java code.

What can be done to combine an App Inventor app with an app created with Android SDK is to make use of the ActivityStarter component inside App Inventor. Details on that are here: http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/reference/other/activitystarter.html

Finally, keep in mind that App Inventor apps cannot be uploaded directly to the Market. However, some users have created a process that allows to do that, it is called Marketizer.

If you spend some time reading posts from this forum: programming-with-app-inventor (it is a Google Groups forum), you might get even better ideas.