Open-sourcing ReDex: Making Android apps smaller and faster
4/12/2016 · Bert Maher
What this post added
This post announces the open-sourcing of ReDex, a tool developed by Meta to reduce the size and improve the performance of Android applications. It details new optimizations implemented in ReDex, including feedback-directed class layout to optimize bytecode loading during cold starts, removal of single-implementation interfaces to save space and improve method call efficiency, and stripping of unnecessary metadata like source file names and annotations. The post also presents performance metrics showing significant reductions in app size (25%) and cold start times (up to 30%) for Facebook for Android. It highlights ReDex's design principles for developers: speed, a simple interface for APK handling, and configurability to exclude specific code from optimization. The availability of ReDex on GitHub is announced, encouraging community contributions.