Keep .so files from being trimmed when use Proguard in Android

Question

I am using Proguard in my android app to reduce the number of methods (see this). For that I have coded some lines in proguard-project.txt file. All the jars work well after the necessary commands. But when I try to integrate Video Chat part of Quickblox, they provide us a .so that I would have to integrate. So I just keep it in the libs\armeabi\libilbc-codec.so path as guided by them. Now the project runs well when I run it without Proguard, but when I compile it with Proguard, it gives me with following error:

11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825): FATAL EXCEPTION: Thread-34829
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825): java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    at com.quickblox.videochat.core.objects.AudioRecorder$AudioRecorderRunnable.run(AudioRecorder.java:196)
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:864)
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825): Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Couldn't load ilbc-codec: findLibrary returned null
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary(Runtime.java:365)
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:535)
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    at com.googlecode.androidilbc.Codec.<init>(Codec.java:16)
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    at com.googlecode.androidilbc.Codec.<clinit>(Codec.java:5)
11-21 18:18:19.171: E/AndroidRuntime(19825):    ... 2 more
11-21 18:18:19.281: E/copybit(19825): Error opening frame buffer errno=13 (Permission denied)

I am very noob to using Proguard as well as NDK, so can anyone guide me as how can I overcome this issue? I have added Native support by Right clicking on project -> Android Tool -> Add Native Support.. and selected the .so file I have been using. So can anyone suggest any solution or the lines that I would have to write to this .so file to work ?

Thanks in Advance.

EDIT: After following @ph0b's comment, I tried following steps:

I have removed BDK supprot from the app following this tutorial and also unzipped the apk as per his steps and I am getting my "libilbc-codec.so" library under "/lib/armeabi". But still getting the below error. So what might be wrong now ??

11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049): FATAL EXCEPTION: Thread-455
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049): Process: com.hypersquare, PID: 6049
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049): java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: dalvik.system.PathClassLoader[DexPathList[[zip file "/system/framework/com.google.android.maps.jar", zip file "/data/app/com.hypersquare-1/base.apk"],nativeLibraryDirectories=[/data/app/com.hypersquare-1/lib/arm, /vendor/lib, /system/lib]]] couldn't find "libilbc-codec.so"
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049):     at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary(Runtime.java:366)
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049):     at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:989)
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049):     at com.googlecode.androidilbc.Codec.<init>(Codec.java:16)
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049):     at com.googlecode.androidilbc.Codec.<clinit>(Codec.java:5)
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049):     at com.quickblox.videochat.core.objects.AudioRecorder$AudioRecorderRunnable.run(AudioRecorder.java:196)
11-24 12:12:29.045: E/AndroidRuntime(6049):     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:818)

Answer 1

Proguard shouldn't remove .so files, I guess your issue comes from something else.

When you use "add native support" from eclipse, eclipse creates an empty ndk library project (a jni folder with empty sources and a sample Makefile).

So when you build your app, eclipse empties libs/*/ folders, then build and install the newly created library here.

If you don't use the NDK yourself (not compiling any sources with it), you should remove the jni folder and its content from your project, and put the .so files you need to be packaged into your apk, directly inside libs/(armeabi|x86|...) folders (btw, it's jniLibs instead of libs when using Android Studio).

In order to check what .so files are getting packaged into your app, you can open your APK as a zip file and look under the lib/(armeabi|x86|...) folders.