this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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wtf
App name is very likely referenced inside every class file. Changing the name triggers a change for every file in the project. Depending on the version control software it may consider that grounds to re-download the entire file on update.
The actual change may have only consisted of 180mb of changes but it affects 34.1GB of files.
I'm not a mobile app developer so I'm a bit confused. Why would every class need to refer the app name? Isn't it enough of the pom file (or whatever the equivalent is that has to package the app) knows it?
Android apps are written in Kotlin or Java and this means every file will be per convention under com.company.appname(or similar)
And every file will have a line
package com.company.appnameAnd references to other files in the import.
This means every source code file is changed and therfore recompiled and the update will include the whole app.
Now 35GB means there is a lot of image and/or Audio resources also included. Why this is updated as well I don't know, but their path also changed. Maybe that's enough for the Version control to see it as new.
And that's why you use a separate codename for actual software development. Changing the visible app name should only affect a few resource files.
In those cases, I would leave the internal naming alone. It's not uncommon for software to have a different name internally than externally.
Not if you're a garbage developer.
Assuming a language like Java: It's possible that the app name is included in the name of packages, so referencing packages other than the current one would need the app name. See the constant pool.
But that falls into the "bad programmer" someone else mentioned. Developers should have internal code names that are independent of marketing stuff like the name of the app.
What if the new name is very long?