It is a non-transitive R class world

By 10 months ago

After Duplo modularization, we seen that the duty producing a transitive R class was taking a big period of time to execute. To remove this process altogether, and for the reason that non-transitive R class is marketed to have as much as 40% incremental build time improvement, we determined emigrate our codebase to make use of it.

For those who’re not accustomed to nonTransitiveRClass, beforehand often known as namespacedRclass, it’s an Android Gradle Plugin flag that permits namespacing R courses so that each module’s R class solely consists of sources declared within the module itself, and never sources from the modules or libraries it depends upon. This flag is enabled by default for brand spanking new initiatives since Android Studio Bumblebee.

On this put up, we’ll stroll by means of how we transitioned to non-transitive R class and a number of the advantages — each anticipated and surprising — that we noticed.

Establishing conventions

Kotlin

Since sources can’t all be referenced utilizing the present module’s R class anymore, we first wanted to align on how we wished them to be referenced within the non-transitive R class world. Utilizing the fully-qualified title for R courses to reference sources, e.g. getString(slack.l10n.R.string.at_everyone), was cumbersome and verbose, so we settled on utilizing import aliases as a substitute for that objective:

import slack.l10n.R as L10nR

class Clazz(context: Context) 
  init
    context.getString(L10nR.string.at_everyone)

Java

Sadly, import aliases are a Kotlin-specific function and never accessible in Java. Nonetheless, contemplating that solely 4% of our codebase was nonetheless in Java, we agreed that utilizing the fully-qualified title to reference sources not declared within the present module was a ok answer, and would function motivation emigrate these courses to Kotlin down the road.

Migration

Preliminary technique

We had been planning on utilizing Android Studio’s Refactor > Migrate to Non-Transitive R Classes function to refactor all R references to be fully-qualified, after which use this script to undergo the refactored recordsdata and alter the fully-qualified references to make use of import aliases.

Nonetheless, on the scale of our codebase, with greater than 400 modules, Android Studio took all evening on an Intel Macbook Professional (we hadn’t but moved to M1 Macs) to do a part of the work and brought on the UI to change into non-responsive after, so we pivoted to a special migration technique.

Chosen technique

The vast majority of our sources are outlined in two modules: the strings are in :l10n-strings and most different sources are in :slack-kit-resources. So, we proceeded with the next technique:

  1. We first used Android Studio’s Discover & Substitute with the regex ([[|(|]| )R.string. to switch string useful resource references with $1L10nR.string. and the regex ([[|(|]| )R.(coloration|dimen|drawable|font|uncooked|type|attr).sk_  to switch different useful resource references with $1SlackKitR.$2.sk_.
  2. Then we ran a modified model of the aforementioned script to iterate over recordsdata that used both L10nR or SlackKitR as a useful resource reference and added the mandatory import aliases to them. The wanted dependencies had been added to the modules that had been beforehand relying on both :l10n-strings or :slack-kit-resources transitively by means of the R class. The mission began compiling efficiently once more.
  3. We enabled non-transitive R class by including android.nonTransitiveRClass=true to the basis gradle.properties file, and manually up to date the few remaining useful resource references that had been failing compilation.
  4. As the ultimate step of the migration, we enabled a non-transitive R class dependent optimization that generates the compile time solely R class utilizing the app’s native sources by including android.enableAppCompileTimeRClass=true to the identical gradle.properties file.

Developer expertise

Discoverability enhancements

To assist builders work as successfully within the non-transitive R class world as they did earlier than, we discovered the 4 most typical import aliases within the codebase, by working grep -o -h -r -E 'import w+(.w+)+.R as [a-zA-Z0-9]+R' . | kind | uniq -c | kind -b -n -r, and added them as live templates that begin with r for discoverability.

Aliases live templates

Not like file and code templates, stay templates can’t be made accessible to everybody who works on the mission by means of Intellij. To work round this, we copied the stay templates file from Android Studio’s templates listing in ~/Library/Utility Assist/Google/AndroidStudio<model> and checked it into our Git repository underneath the config/templates listing. As a strategy to import it into Android Studio at any time when a brand new model is put in, we then used this script, which runs as a part of bootstrapping the native improvement atmosphere, to repeat the live templates file again to the templates listing.

Conference enforcement

Along with the stay templates, we additionally developed three lint checks, that constructed on high of the conventions that we agreed on, to enforced the next:

  1. Solely the native module’s R class may be imported with out an import alias.
    • For instance, slack.uikit.sources.R can’t be imported outdoors :slack-kit-resources with out an import alias.
  2. Import aliases for R courses needs to be constant throughout the codebase.
    • For instance, slack.uikit.sources.R can solely be imported as SlackKitR, not SKR or the rest.
  3. R courses/sources can’t be referenced utilizing their fully-qualified names, however moderately by means of import aliases.
    • For instance, getString(L10nR.string.at_everyone) needs to be used as a substitute of getString(slack.l10n.R.string.at_everyone).

All three lint checks have auto-fixes, so fixing any ensuing lint points is a breeze.

Advantages 

Migrating to non-transitive R class had many advantages, essentially the most notable being a ~14% enchancment in incremental construct occasions following a useful resource or format change.

It additionally lowered APK/DEX dimension by ~8.5%, which is about 5.5MB of code!

APK size difference graph

Along with the advantages coated above, which had been anticipated, the transition had some oblique advantages that had been surprising:

  • It uncovered cases the place some sources had been declared in a single module however solely utilized in one other, which allowed us to maneuver them for elevated module cohesion. 
  • It made it simpler to determine the place sources are coming from, which enabled us to slim down inaccessible UI parts and triage them.

Conclusion 

All in all, the migration to non-transitive R class has been an enormous success for us, and developer sentiment is optimistic due to all its advantages and the tooling we applied as assist.

We suggest you make the transition to non-transitive R class to reap the advantages we’ve outlined if you’re engaged on a multi-module mission or plan on introducing modules to your mission.

For those who like engaged on stuff like this, we’re hiring!

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