Linking on Android

Articol
03/30/2018

Xamarin.Android applications use a linker to reduce the size of the application. The linker employs static analysis of your application to determine which assemblies are actually used, which types are actually used, and which members are actually used. The linker then behaves like a garbage collector, continually looking for the assemblies, types, and members that are referenced until the entire closure of referenced assemblies, types, and members is found. Then everything outside of this closure is discarded.

For example, the Hello Android sample:

Configuration	1.2.0 Size	4.0.1 Size
Release without Linking:	14.0 MB	16.0 MB
Release with Linking:	4.2 MB	2.9 MB

Linking results in a package that is 30% the size of the original (unlinked) package in 1.2.0, and 18% of the unlinked package in 4.0.1.

Control

Linking is based on static analysis. Consequently, anything that depends upon the runtime environment won't be detected:

// To play along at home, Example must be in a different assembly from MyActivity.
public class Example {
    // Compiler provides default constructor...
}

[Activity (Label="Linker Example", MainLauncher=true)]
public class MyActivity {
    protected override void OnCreate (Bundle bundle)
    {
        base.OnCreate (bundle);

        // Will this work?
        var o = Activator.CreateInstance (typeof (ExampleLibrary.Example));
    }
}

Linker Behavior

The primary mechanism for controlling the linker is the Linker Behavior (Linking in Visual Studio) drop-down within the Project Options dialog box. There are three options:

Don't Link (None in Visual Studio)
Link SDK Assemblies (Sdk Assemblies Only)
Link All Assemblies (Sdk and User Assemblies)

The Don't Link option turns off the linker; the above "Release without Linking" application size example used this behavior. This is useful for troubleshooting runtime failures, to see if the linker is responsible. This setting is not usually recommended for production builds.

The Link SDK Assemblies option only links assemblies that come with Xamarin.Android. All other assemblies (such as your code) are not linked.

The Link All Assemblies option links all assemblies, which means your code may also be removed if there are no static references.

The above example will work with the Don't Link and Link SDK Assemblies options, and will fail with the Link All Assemblies behavior, generating the following error:

E/mono    (17755): [0xafd4d440:] EXCEPTION handling: System.MissingMethodException: Default constructor not found for type ExampleLibrary.Example.
I/MonoDroid(17755): UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.MissingMethodException: Default constructor not found for type ExampleLibrary.Example.
I/MonoDroid(17755): at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type,bool) <0x00180>
I/MonoDroid(17755): at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type) <0x00017>
I/MonoDroid(17755): at LinkerScratch2.Activity1.OnCreate (Android.OS.Bundle) <0x00027>
I/MonoDroid(17755): at Android.App.Activity.n_OnCreate_Landroid_os_Bundle_ (intptr,intptr,intptr) <0x00057>
I/MonoDroid(17755): at (wrapper dynamic-method) object.95bb4fbe-bef8-4e5b-8e99-ca83a5d7a124 (intptr,intptr,intptr) <0x00033>
E/mono    (17755): [0xafd4d440:] EXCEPTION handling: System.MissingMethodException: Default constructor not found for type ExampleLibrary.Example.
E/mono    (17755):
E/mono    (17755): Unhandled Exception: System.MissingMethodException: Default constructor not found for type ExampleLibrary.Example.
E/mono    (17755):   at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, Boolean nonPublic) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
E/mono    (17755):   at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
E/mono    (17755):   at LinkerScratch2.Activity1.OnCreate (Android.OS.Bundle bundle) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
E/mono    (17755):   at Android.App.Activity.n_OnCreate_Landroid_os_Bundle_ (IntPtr jnienv, IntPtr native__this, IntPtr native_savedInstanceState) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
E/mono    (17755):   at (wrapper dynamic-method) object:95bb4fbe-bef8-4e5b-8e99-ca83a5d7a124 (intptr,intptr,intptr)

Preserving Code

The linker will sometimes remove code that you want to preserve. For example:

You might have code that you call dynamically via System.Reflection.MemberInfo.Invoke.
If you instantiate types dynamically, you may want to preserve the default constructor of your types.
If you use XML serialization, you may want to preserve the properties of your types.

In these cases, you can use the Android.Runtime.Preserve attribute. Every member that is not statically linked by the application is subject to be removed, so this attribute can be used to mark members that are not statically referenced but are still needed by your application. You can apply this attribute to every member of a type, or to the type itself.

In the following example, this attribute is used to preserve the constructor of the Example class:

public class Example
{
    [Android.Runtime.Preserve]
    public Example ()
    {
    }
}

If you want to preserve the entire type, you can use the following attribute syntax:

[Android.Runtime.Preserve (AllMembers = true)]

For example, in the following code fragment the entire Example class is preserved for XML serialization:

[Android.Runtime.Preserve (AllMembers = true)]
class Example
{
    // Compiler provides default constructor...
}

Sometimes you want to preserve certain members, but only if the containing type was preserved. In those cases, use the following attribute syntax:

[Android.Runtime.Preserve (Conditional = true)]

If you do not want to take a dependency on the Xamarin libraries – for example, you are building a cross platform portable class library (PCL) – you can still use the Android.Runtime.Preserve attribute. To do this, declare a PreserveAttribute class within the Android.Runtime namespace like this:

namespace Android.Runtime
{
    public sealed class PreserveAttribute : System.Attribute
    {
        public bool AllMembers;
        public bool Conditional;
    }
}

In the above examples, the Preserve attribute is declared in the Android.Runtime namespace; however, you can use the Preserve attribute in any namespace because the linker looks up this attribute by type name.

falseflag

If the [Preserve] attribute can't be used, it is often useful to provide a block of code so that the linker believes that the type is used, while preventing the block of code from being executed at runtime. To make use of this technique, we could do:

[Activity (Label="Linker Example", MainLauncher=true)]
class MyActivity {

#pragma warning disable 0219, 0649
    static bool falseflag = false;
    static MyActivity ()
    {
        if (falseflag) {
            var ignore = new Example ();
        }
    }
#pragma warning restore 0219, 0649

    // ...
}

linkskip

It is possible to specify that a set of user-provided assemblies should not be linked at all, while allowing other user assemblies to be skipped with the Link SDK Assemblies behavior by using the AndroidLinkSkip MSBuild property:

<PropertyGroup>
    <AndroidLinkSkip>Assembly1;Assembly2</AndroidLinkSkip>
</PropertyGroup>

LinkDescription

The @(LinkDescription) Build action may be used on files which can contain a Custom linker configuration file. file. Custom linker configuration files may be required to preserve internal or private members that need to be preserved.

Custom Attributes

When an assembly is linked, the following custom attribute types will be removed from all members:

System.ObsoleteAttribute
System.MonoDocumentationNoteAttribute
System.MonoExtensionAttribute
System.MonoInternalNoteAttribute
System.MonoLimitationAttribute
System.MonoNotSupportedAttribute
System.MonoTODOAttribute
System.Xml.MonoFIXAttribute

When an assembly is linked, the following custom attribute types will be removed from all members in Release builds:

System.Diagnostics.DebuggableAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerBrowsableAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerDisplayAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerHiddenAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCodeAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepperBoundaryAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerTypeProxyAttribute
System.Diagnostics.DebuggerVisualizerAttribute

Partajați prin

Linking on Android

Control

Linker Behavior

Preserving Code

falseflag

linkskip

LinkDescription

Custom Attributes

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Partajați prin

Linking on Android

Control

Linker Behavior

Preserving Code

falseflag

linkskip

LinkDescription

Custom Attributes

Related Links

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