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Packaging Wear Apps

  • Artikkeli

Warning

The following docs and sample projects may no longer be maintained. As of Xamarin.Android 11.1, automatically packaging an Android Wear application within an Android handheld application is no longer supported. It is recommended to distribute Android Wear applications as standalone applications instead.

Android Wear 1.0 apps are packaged with a full Android app for distribution on Google Play.

Android Wear 2.0 apps can be submitted to Google Play as standalone applications.

Automatic Packaging

Starting with Xamarin Android 5.0, your Wear app is automatically packaged as a resource in your Handheld app when you create a project reference from the Handheld project to the Wear project. You can use the following steps to create this association:

  1. If your Wear app is not already part of your Handheld solution, right-click the solution node and select Add > Add Existing Project....

  2. Navigate to the .csproj file of your Wear app, select it, and click Open. The Wear app project should now be visible in your Handheld solution.

  3. Right-click the References node and select Add Reference.

  4. In the Reference Manager dialog, enable your Wear project (click to add a check mark), then click OK.

  5. Change the package name for your Wear project so that it matches the package name of the Handheld project (the package name can be changed under Properties > Android Manifest).

Note that you will get an XA5211 error if the package name of the Wear app does not match the package name of the Handheld app. For example:

Error XA5211: Embedded wear app package name differs from handheld 
app package name (com.companyname.mywearapp != com.companyname.myapp). (XA5211)

To correct this error, change the package name of the Wear app so that it matches the package name of the Handheld app.

When you click Build > Build All, this association triggers automatic packaging of the Wear project into the main Handheld (Phone) project. The Wear app is automatically built and included as a resource in the Handheld app.

The assembly that the Wear app project generates is not used as an assembly reference in the Handheld (Phone) project. Instead, the build process does the following:

  • Verifies that the package names match.

  • Generates XML and adds it to the Handheld project to associate it with the Wear app. For example:

    <!-- Handheld (Phone) Project.csproj -->
<ProjectReference Include="..\MyWearApp\MyWearApp.csproj">
    <Project>{D80E1FEF-653B-448C-B2AA-609C74E88340}</Project>
    <Name>MyWearApp</Name>
    <IsAppExtension>True</IsAppExtension>
</ProjectReference>

  • Adds the Wear app as a raw resource to the Handheld project.

Manual Packaging

You can write Android Wear apps in Xamarin.Android before version 5.0, but you must follow these manual packaging instructions to distribute the app:

  1. Ensure that your Wearable project and Handheld (Phone) projects have the same version number and package name.

  2. Manually build the Wearable project as a Release build.

  3. Manually add the release .APK from step (2) into the Resources/raw directory of the Handheld (Phone) project.

  4. Manually add a new XML resource Resources/xml/wearable_app_desc.xml in the Handheld project which refers to Wearable APK from step (3):

    <wearableApp package="wearable.app.package.name">
    <versionCode>1</versionCode>
    <versionName>1.0</versionName>
    <rawPathResId>NAME_OF_APK_FROM_STEP_3</rawPathResId>
</wearableApp>

  5. Manually add a <meta-data /> element to the Handheld project's AndroidManifest.xml <application> element that refers to the new XML resource:

    <meta-data android:name="com.google.android.wearable.beta.app"
    android:resource="@xml/wearable_app_desc"/>

See also the Android Developer site's manual packging instructions.