Tauri Android Build System#

Blinko's Android app is built with Tauri 2, compiling a React/TypeScript frontend bundled with a Rust backend into a native Android APK. The Android project lives under app/src-tauri/gen/android/ — a Gradle project generated and maintained by the Tauri CLI. No web-to-native conversion tools (e.g., Capacitor) are used; Tauri renders the web UI inside an Android WebView via the androidx.webkit library.

The primary NPM script entry points are defined in app/package.json:

The Tauri app identifier is com.blinko.app and version is managed in tauri.conf.json. The beforeBuildCommand runs bun run build:no-pwa (Vite build with PWA disabled), and the frontend dist is sourced from ../../dist/public 1.

Gradle Project Structure#

The Android Gradle project at app/src-tauri/gen/android/ uses Gradle 8.9 2 with Android Gradle Plugin 8.5.1 and Kotlin 1.9.25 3. The settings.gradle includes the :app module and delegates further plugin configuration to a Tauri-generated tauri.settings.gradle (generated at build time by Tauri CLI; not committed).

The app-level build.gradle.kts is the main configuration file:

• Application ID / namespace: com.blinko.app 4
• SDK targets: compileSdk 34, minSdk 24, targetSdk 34 5
• Version: pulled from tauri.properties at build time 6
• Plugins: com.android.application, org.jetbrains.kotlin.android, and the custom rust plugin 7
• Tauri hook: apply(from = "tauri.build.gradle.kts") at line 86 — this file is generated by Tauri CLI at runtime 8

gradle.properties sets JVM heap to 2 GB (-Xmx2048m) and enables AndroidX.

Custom Rust Gradle Plugin#

The buildSrc/ directory implements a custom "rust" Gradle plugin used to bridge Gradle's build lifecycle with Tauri's Rust compilation step.

RustPlugin.kt registers product flavors and build tasks:

• Creates an "abi" flavor dimension with a universal flavor (all ABIs) and individual flavors for arm64, arm, x86, x86_64 9
• For each flavor × build type, creates rustBuild[Arch][Profile] Gradle tasks (e.g., rustBuildArm64Release) that hook into mergeJniLibFolders 10
• ABI and target lists can be overridden via Gradle properties abiList, archList, targetList 11

BuildTask.kt executes the actual Rust compilation:

• Runs bun tauri android android-studio-script --target <target> [--release] via project.exec 12
• Resolves the Bun executable cross-platform: bun.exe / bun.cmd on Windows, bun on Unix 13
• Passes -v / -vv based on Gradle log level 14

Build Types and Signing#

build.gradle.kts defines two build types:

Debug:

• usesCleartextTraffic = true (for dev server connectivity) 15
• Debug symbols retained for all four ABIs: arm64-v8a, armeabi-v7a, x86, x86_64 16
• Minification disabled 17

Release:

• Signed via keystore.properties (loaded from the project root), containing keyAlias, password, and storeFile 18
• Minification enabled with ProGuard; rules loaded from all *.pro files plus proguard-android-optimize.txt 19
• proguard-rules.pro exists as a placeholder; no custom rules are active

Rust / Cargo Configuration#

app/src-tauri/Cargo.toml compiles the Rust crate as staticlib, cdylib, and rlib — all three output types are required for Android JNI linking.

Desktop-only plugins (updater, global-shortcut, single-instance, autostart, clipboard, mouse) are gated with cfg(not(any(target_os = "android", target_os = "ios"))) 20, so they are automatically excluded from Android builds. Cross-platform plugins (fs, dialog, http, upload, process, opener) are always included.

CI/CD Pipeline (GitHub Actions)#

The publish-android job in .github/workflows/app-release.yml automates the full release build:

Environment setup:

• JDK 17 (Zulu) + Android SDK + NDK 27.0.11902837 21
• Rust toolchain with all four Android targets: aarch64-linux-android, armv7-linux-androideabi, i686-linux-android, x86_64-linux-android 22
• Bun 1.2.8 23
• Gradle cache keyed on *.gradle* and gradle-wrapper.properties 24

Key steps:

1. Decodes the UPLOAD_KEYSTORE GitHub secret (base64) and writes keystore.properties at app/src-tauri/gen/android/keystore.properties 25
2. Runs bun run tauri:android:build with NDK_HOME set 26
3. Output APK: app/src-tauri/gen/android/app/build/outputs/apk/universal/release/app-universal-release.apk, renamed to Blinko_<version>_universal.apk 27
4. Uploads to GitHub Release via softprops/action-gh-release 28

Only the universal flavor is published — not per-ABI APKs.

Key Files Reference#