apks_installer

A small multiplatform command-line tool that installs .apks split-APK bundles (as produced by bundletool) onto an Android device over ADB. Each APK is streamed straight from the archive, with nothing extracted to disk.

Trivial flow:

1. Opens the .apks file (a ZIP) with miniz and collects every embedded .apk entry and its uncompressed size.
2. Connects to the local ADB server on 127.0.0.1:5037. If nothing is listening, it runs adb start-server (bundled copy first, then PATH) and retries once.
3. Selects the device with host:transport-any, or host:transport:<serial> if a serial is given.
4. Runs the package manager session flow over exec: services:

cmd package install-create -r -S <total_bytes>
cmd package install-write  -S <apk_bytes> <session> <index>_<name>.apk -
cmd package install-commit <session>

Requirements

• A C99 compiler with GNU extensions (gcc or clang); MinGW-w64 on Windows
• adb from platform-tools, on PATH or in platform-tools/ next to the executable
• An Android device with USB debugging enabled

Build

With make:

make

Without make:

# Windows
gcc -std=gnu99 -O2 -w -c miniz/miniz.c -o miniz/miniz.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -O2 -Wall -Wextra -isystem miniz src/main.c src/apks.c src/install.c src/adb_win.c src/adb_posix.c miniz/miniz.o -o apks_installer.exe -lws2_32

# Linux / macOS
gcc -std=gnu99 -O2 -w -c miniz/miniz.c -o miniz/miniz.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -O2 -Wall -Wextra -isystem miniz src/main.c src/apks.c src/install.c src/adb_win.c src/adb_posix.c miniz/miniz.o -o apks_installer

Usage

apks_installer <file.apks> [device_serial]

With one connected device the serial can be omitted. With several, pass the serial as listed by adb devices.

apks_installer app.apks
apks_installer app.apks R58M123ABC

License

Apache 2.0. See the LICENSE file.