I'm trying to create Android App Bundle (.aab) as it is described here Build your app from the command line.
I first compile the resources:
aapt2 compile res/drawable-hdpi/icon.png -o compiled_resources
aapt2 compile res/drawable-ldpi/icon.png -o compiled_resources
aapt2 compile res/drawable-mdpi/icon.png -o compiled_resources
aapt2 compile res/values/strings.xml -o compiled_resources
And then use the link command:
aapt2 link --proto-format -o output.apk -I android.jar --manifest manifest/AndroidManifest.xml -R compiled_resources/drawable-hdpi_icon.png.flat compiled_resources/drawable-ldpi_icon.png.flat compiled_resources/drawable-mdpi_icon.png.flat compiled_resources/values_strings.arsc.flat --auto-add-overlay
Now I want to create the base.zip folder for the bundletool, and it requires, as it is stated in here, the AndroidManifest.xml and resources.pb files, which are located within the output.apk file that the earlier aapt2 link command created.
Compile and link your app's resources says: "You can then extract content from the output APK".
I did a search online and found some methods to extract files from an apk. The most popular one includes apktool with the simple command: apktool d output.apk -f, another one uses aapt with: aapt d xmltree output.apk AndroidManifest.xml.
Both of these commands fail with xml reading errors.
My guess is that the reason for that is that AndroidManifest.xml is not really an xml file as one would expect in a regular apk file (created with aapt for example), but an xml file of the protobuf format, which apktool and aapt don't expect.
Does anybody know how the link expect us to: "extract content from the output APK"?