Metalava usage by clients

This doc lists out known usages of Metalava with specific features used by each user. The main users are Android platform and AndroidX libraries.

Features used by both androidx and Android platform

  • Signature generation of *.txt e.g. current.txt (--api)
  • API change compatibility checking of current API vs previous version txt (--check-compatibility:api:released)
  • API lint for compliance with Android API guidelines (--api-lint)

Features used exclusively by androidx

  • Kotlin sources as inputs

Features used exclusively by Android platform

  • Support for partial signature files (opposite of --show-unannotated) where @SystemApi txt file omits public APIs
  • Java stubs for jar generation (--stubs) for generating android.jar, etc for SDK
  • Java stubs for docs generation (--doc-stubs) for passing to documentation tools
  • Documentation stub enhancement (--enhance-documentation)
  • Injecting added in API level into documentation stubs (--apply-api-levels)
  • Generating API levels information for documentation and SDK (--generate-api-levels)
  • Documentation rewriting for documentation stubs (--replace-documentation) used by libcore
  • Rewriting of nullness annotations to @RecentlyNull/NonNull (--migrate-nullness, --force-convert-to-warning-nullability-annotations) for SDK
  • Tracking @removed APIs (--removed-api)
  • DEX API signature generation (signature-to-dex) for hidden API enforcement
  • XML API signature generation (--api-xml) for CTS tests and test coverage infrastructure
  • Annotation include, exclude, rewrite, passthrough in stubs (--include-annotations, --exclude-all-annotations, --pass-through-annotation, --exclude-annotation)
  • Annotation extraction (--extract-annotations, --copy-annotations) for generating the SDK
  • Generating SDK metadata (--sdk-values`)