Why does Android extract native libraries to 2 locations?

Question

I have recently noticed that Android extracts the native libraries in the 'lib' directory in the APK to two different locations. They are in the app folder (/data/app/package/lib/) and the app data folder (/data/data/package/lib). Not to mention they're already contained in the APK. For games where these libraries total up to 50MB each, this wasted 100MB of my storage space on my SD card.


Why does this happen? Is this normal? Is there any way to stop this from happening?


I am on an Android Lollipop (5.1.1) running a Resurrection Remix ROM for Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo+.


— rodit | Sources

Answer

In truth, the lib folder you can found under /data/data/com.package/ is called a symlink. The real position of an app's libraries is located to /data/app/com.package/lib, while the reason for the libraries to exist outside the APK, is for performance purposes: since APKs are compressed files, it would be a waste of time (and a considerable negative impact on usability) to have the OS extract them anytime you launch an app, don't you think?


— Grimoire | Sources

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