Titanium Community Questions & Answer Archive

We felt that 6+ years of knowledge should not die so this is the Titanium Community Questions & Answer Archive

Android signed .apk won't install

So I jumped through all the hoops (I think) to create a certificate using keytool. Next I used Titanium Studio to package it up. Gave it the keystore location, password, etc. All seemed well. Before putting it in Android Market Place I wanted to test it, so I emaild it to my gmail account and attached the signed .apk file. Got a nice install option right in my gmail on the phone but when I click it I get teh following error:

There is a problem parsing the package

That is all, nothing else. Any suggestions???

Thanks!

— asked February 29th 2012 by Rich Place
  • android
  • deployment
  • parse error
  • sign app
0 Comments

2 Answers

  • First, uninstall any version installed on the device and signed by the development key.
    Same app id, different cert sigs.

    — answered February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather
    permalink
    9 Comments

    • Second,

      There have been issues with APKs not installing from certain apps.
      I tend to move them using box or dropbox as that hasn't failed yet.

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather

    • First time EVER signing an app for me and brand new phone. I did uninstall the development version of the app. by hitting Settings|App|Select App|Uninstall|Confirm

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Rich Place

    • Third,

      Be sure your API level tag is correct. If your minimum sdk was lets say 2.3 and your device is 2.2, the market would filter this out for you.

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather

    • Fourth,
      You can use the key tools to verify the signature.

      jarsigner -verify myapk.apk

      Just running through all the things we have ever run into with signing.

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather

    • and for the love of all thats good, DON'T FORGET YOUR STOREPASS!

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather

    • Thanks for all the ideas, Stephen. jarsigner reports back "jar Verified."

      Market can't be an issue as I am emailing it to myself and trying to install from gmail as an attachment.

      Anything else?

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Rich Place

    • Don't mark this accepted until we get you a solution

      Copy the apk to the device's SD card another way and use a file browser to open it. It is possible that the transfer of the APK came across as text not a binary file.

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather

    • re market and minsdk:

      You can try to force an app that was built to an SDK higher than a device manually. It will fail with the parse error. I doubt this is the problem as you have had the dev signed app running.

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Stephen Feather

    • Maybe the attachment is getting corrupt ? Put it in a zip file before sending (Highly unlikely but its the only discriminator i can see - the transport)

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Nick Milner

  • Got it to work, but not sure it is a viable solution. If I copy the file to my phone's SD storage it will show up under "downloads" in apps/launcher. If I try to install from there same parse error. I tried emailing the attachment do a non-gmail account and the .apk file won't show up correctly it shows up as a winmail.dat file, not sure if that is ISP driven or what.

    What does work is copying the file to SD storage and using a 3rd party file browser (Astro), tapping and selecting install option.

    Seems like it should work as documented. On Appcelerator wiki they offer up three solutions for deployment. 1) Market 2) Url from web site 3) attachment to gmail account.

    I like the attachment in gmail as it gives user easy to click install option. Still the user must accept apps not from the Market, but I thought this would be an easy way to test with a small group of users prior to deployment to Market.

    Never having deployed app to Market I want to know it will work first before I turn my client loose on it. Can anyone tell me if it is easy/quick to take an app out of the market if I deploy it and it does not install quickly?

    Thank for any and all help!

    — answered February 29th 2012 by Rich Place
    permalink
    1 Comment

    • Should be take it out of the Market quickly if it does not install correctly…long day :-(

      — commented February 29th 2012 by Rich Place
The ownership of individual contributions to this community generated content is retained by the authors of their contributions.
All trademarks remain the property of the respective owner.