Why signed android apk is not running on emulator

Question

I have made a signed apk of an android project. Whenever my client try to run it on the emulator, he faces the following error message:

D:\Android\android-sdk-
windows\tools>adb install -r abc.apk
500 KB/s (6940708 bytes in 13.534s)
        pkg: /data/local/tmp/abc.apk
Failure [INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES]

What is the resolution?

Answer 1

The good thing about building manually your apk is that you don’t have to name your resources directory to res, you can name it anything you want.

You can find ant scripts in: \platforms\android-1.5\templates\android-rules.xml

Step 1: Generate Resource java code and packaged Resources aapt package -f -M ${manifest.file} -F ${packaged.resource.file} -I ${path.to.android-jar.library} -S ${android-resource-directory} [-m -J ${folder.to.output.the.R.java}]

Step 2: Compile java source codes + R.java use javac

Step 3: Convert classes to Dalvik bytecodes use dx.bat dx.bat –dex –output=${output.dex.file} ${compiled.classes.directory} ${jar files..}

Step 4: Create unsigned APK use apkbuilder

apkbuilder ${output.apk.file} -u -z ${packagedresource.file} -f ${dex.file}

or

apkbuilder ${output.apk.file} -u -z ${packagedresource.file} -f ${dex.file} -rf ${source.dir} -rj ${libraries.dir}

-rf = resources required for compiled source files? -rj = resources required for jar files

Step 6: Generate a key use keytool

Step 7: Sign APK use jarsigner

jarsigner -keystore ${keystore} -storepass ${keystore.password} -keypass ${keypass} -signedjar ${signed.apkfile} ${unsigned.apkfile} ${keyalias}

Step 8: Publish use adb adb -d install -r ${signed.apk}

Inspecting your APK file:

aapt list -v latest.apk

Answer 2

You could check if the client has not disabled installation of unsigned apps in the emulator.

Answer 3

As mentioned by steelbytes, the error INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES suggests that the APK isn't signed like you think it is.

Run this command to verify which certificate was used to sign the APK:
jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs abc.apk

For each entry in the APK, you should see something like this:

sm    152412 Wed Oct 14 14:16:52 CEST 2009 classes.dex

      X.509, CN=Meebo, OU=Meebo, O=Meebo, L=Mountain View, ST=California, C=US
      [certificate is valid from 28/10/08 06:49 to 13/08/82 07:49]

Otherwise, if the APK isn't signed, you'll get the message jar is unsigned.