Speed Up Android Channel Packaging with Walle: A Quick Guide

Introduction

Walle is a next‑generation channel‑packaging tool for Android under the APK Signature V2 Scheme. It adds custom channel information to the APK Signature Block, allowing fast generation of channel‑specific APKs, usable as a standalone tool or deployed on an HTTP server for real‑time processing.

Usage

Walle dramatically speeds up multi‑channel builds; a project that previously took over ten minutes for seven channels can be built in about two minutes.

Add the plugin and dependencies in build.gradle:

buildscript {
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.meituan.android.walle:plugin:1.1.3'
    }
}
apply plugin: 'walle'

dependencies {
    compile 'com.meituan.android.walle:library:1.1.3'
}

walle {
    // output directory for channel APKs
    apkOutputFolder = new File("${project.buildDir}/outputs/channels")
    // custom APK file name format
    apkFileNameFormat = '${appName}-${packageName}-${channel}-${buildType}-v${versionName}-${versionCode}-${buildTime}.apk'
    // channel configuration file
    channelFile = new File("${project.getProjectDir()}/channel")
}

Key properties: apkOutputFolder: output path, default

new File("${project.buildDir}/outputs/apk")

apkFileNameFormat

: default 'appName-appName-{buildType}-${channel}.apk' Available variables for the format include projectName, appName, packageName, buildType, channel, versionName, versionCode, buildTime, fileSHA1, flavorName, and channelFile.

Create a channel text file in the app directory with entries such as:

Qh360 #360
Yyb #应用宝
Wdj #豌豆荚
Lenovo #联想
Xiaomi #小米
Huawei #华为
Meizhu #魅族

Read the channel at runtime:

String channel = WalleChannelReader.getChannel(this.getApplicationContext());

Build the channel APKs with Gradle commands, e.g.:

./gradlew clean assembleReleaseChannels

The generated APKs are placed in build/outputs/apk/ (or the directory set by apkOutputFolder). You can also build specific channels:

./gradlew clean assembleReleaseChannels -PchannelList=huawei
./gradlew clean assembleReleaseChannels -PchannelList=huawei,xiaomi