The APK file does not contain gdbserver for x86

[grisse]

Dear All,

I take a random app from playstore, setting debuggable to true (in apk studio), then sign it, uninstall original version, then install new one on android device.

After that I go to visualgdb in visualstudio, and choose “Debug a custom APK file”. I´m not sure which folder to choose for the shared libraries, but I´m guessing it´s in the dir where the apk is unpacked/lib.

I then get a warning about “Warning: the APK file does not contain a gdbserver for x86” plus all other CPU architectures listed in the /lib folder. If I ignore, I get the same message when it gets to the point “synchronizing shared libraries”.

I´m running droid4x, but also tried on various android platforms in the AVD, and tried with a number of random apk´s from the playstore but always get the same. I´m on Win7 64 bit and have 16 GB of RAM.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

[support]

Hi,

Unfortunately that won’t work because the Play Store apps contain release versions of the libraries that simply don’t have debug symbols required for debugging. So even if you manually set the ‘debuggable’ attribute and copy gdbserver, you won’t be able to get any meaningful debugging experience.

[grisse]

Dear Bazis,

 

Thanks! I actually tried to do what you´re saying, copying gdbserver to the apk and now I can debug. I do however get an error showing about a missing file pertaining to symbols. Is there no way to generate symbols more useful than none?

 

Thanks again!

[support]

Hi,

Unfortunately there is no easy or practical way to do that. If the APK vendor has not provided the sources/symbols, you cannot simply reconstruct them from the app.

[Author]

Posts