exception - Android Package manager has died with TransactionTooLargeException

Question

My app reads the list of all installed APK files, and then loop through the list to read the APK info, however it throws a TransactionTooLargeException exception.

From what I have read here http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/TransactionTooLargeException.html, google recommends to break large transactions into smaller transactions. However it seems this happens in the middle when looping through the APK list. If I catch the exception and continue it, the rest all works fine. Is there a way to reduce the memory usage while calling the getPackageInfo? Does that call hold some thing even after it already returned.

Here is the trace when it happened:

at android.app.ApplicationPackageManager.getPackageInfo(ApplicationPackageManager.java:89)
at com.myapp.appreader.getAppDetails(Appreader.java:207)
at com.myapp.appreader.collectData(Appreader.java:99)
at com.myapp.appreader.AppDataCollectionTask.run(AppDataCollectionTask.java:26)
at com.myapp.appreader.service.AppDataTaskExecutor$AppDataAsyncTask.executeTask(AppDataTaskExecutor.java:439) 
at com.myapp.appreader.service.AppDataTaskExecutor$AppDataAsyncTask.doInBackground(AppDataTaskExecutor.java:327)
at com.myapp.appreader.service.AppDataTaskExecutor$AppDataAsyncTask.doInBackground(AppDataTaskExecutor.java:1)
at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:287)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:234)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1080)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:573)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)
Caused by: android.os.TransactionTooLargeExceptionat android.os.BinderProxy.transact(Native Method)
at android.content.pm.IPackageManager$Stub$Proxy.getPackageInfo(IPackageManager.java:1538)
at android.app.ApplicationPackageManager.getPackageInfo(ApplicationPackageManager.java:84)

Answer 1

There is a 1MB limit on a Binder transaction, which means most IPC invocations have to be modest in size.

If you hit a TransactionTooLargeException or similar Binder failures when retrieving data from PackageManager (e.g., getPackageInfo()), try splitting your request over multiple calls, with fewer flags (e.g., GET_META_DATA) per call. Hopefully this will reduce the size of any individual transaction to be under the 1MB limit.

Also, if you are using calls on PackageManager that return multiple results (e.g., getInstalledPackages(), try asking for no flags on that call, then retrieving the values for each package individually, to avoid getting a lot of data on a lot of entries at once.

And, of course, only use flags that you need, particularly if your call might contain some. GET_META_DATA is a classic example of that: many apps use it (e.g., for Play Services), but if you do not need to know the metadata information, don't request it.