XML-Compiler feature missing - surpress overwriting platformBuildVersionName to "APKTOOL"

[iBotPeaches]

Original issue 781 created by TheHardyG on 2015-03-13T07:27:08.000Z:

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. decompile apk
2. do your changes
3. recompile apk
4. re-decompile apk again

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
The original platformBuildVersionName should remain the same.
The platformBuildVersionName is changed to "APKTOOL".

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
apktool 2.0.0RC4, Win7Pro and Win8Pro

Please provide any additional information below.
In general that behavior is maybe right/intended but in some cases it is required to keep the original values as such (maybe not only the above one but also others...???). It would be helpful having a apktool command line switch suppressing this substitutions to keep the original values.

[iBotPeaches]

Comment #1 originally posted by tumtraH.ekreiG on 2015-03-13T10:47:21.000Z:

BTW: for sure I know the -c switch but that's no solution because than the original XML is kept and NO changes take place. But that's not what I wanted to reach...

[iBotPeaches]

Comment #2 originally posted by TheHardyG on 2015-03-13T10:48:33.000Z:

BTW: For sure I know the -c switch but that's not a solution because it keeps the original xml and NO changes take place!

[iBotPeaches]

To be honest I only did that change because not touching it caused aapt to fail and my background in c++ wasn't strong enough to figure out the alternative of leaving the value if one is present or writing it if no value is present.

Then again on the flip side, platformBuildVersion is a value controlled by the build system not user. It'll change the value on stock aapt to the version it's at. This makes me think it should change it.

On the flip flip side I understand the importance of not watermarking apktool into apk. I'll try and rewrite that to only add if a value isn't present.

[iBotPeaches]

iBotPeaches/platform_frameworks_base@0e5dead

This has been fixed in our aapt version, but not yet built into apktool.