This Apktool issue has existed for a long time and is especially prevalent with ROMs with multiple frameworks.
The issue happens because Apktool treats reference values inside XMLs (like layouts) as raw text values, and doesn't resolve them during decompile time. This causes some values to be misformed, but more importantly, this causes values referencing to secondary frameworks to not be resolved with their source frameworks, which also means the framework ID won't be added to usesFramework.ids in apktool.yml, and that breaks recompiling.
The interesting thing is that reference values are actually being resolved when they are located in value resources, like styles, thus presenting an inconsistent behavior.
This simple mod eliminates the "rawValue" for reference values, and that forces the "value" (resource ID) to resolve against the respective frameworks, fixing misformed values in the process.
BEFORE:
I: Using Apktool 2.4.0-896569-SNAPSHOT on Notes.apk
I: Loading resource table...
I: Decoding Shared Library (miui), pkgId: 16
I: Decoding Shared Library (miui.system), pkgId: 18
I: Decoding AndroidManifest.xml with resources...
I: Loading resource table from file: bin\framework\1.apk
I: Regular manifest package...
I: Decoding file-resources...
I: Loading resource table from file: bin\framework\16.apk
I: Decoding Shared Library (androidhwext), pkgId: 15
I: Decoding values */* XMLs...
I: Baksmaling classes.dex...
I: Copying assets and libs...
I: Copying unknown files...
I: Copying original files...
Some comparisons before and after the fix:
https://i.imgur.com/2gTllT0.png
https://i.imgur.com/KzJUeQt.png
AFTER:
I: Using Apktool 2.4.0-896569-SNAPSHOT on Notes.apk
I: Loading resource table...
I: Decoding Shared Library (miui), pkgId: 16
I: Decoding Shared Library (miui.system), pkgId: 18
I: Decoding AndroidManifest.xml with resources...
I: Loading resource table from file: bin\framework\1.apk
I: Regular manifest package...
I: Decoding file-resources...
I: Loading resource table from file: bin\framework\16.apk
I: Decoding Shared Library (androidhwext), pkgId: 15
I: Loading resource table from file: bin\framework\18.apk
I: Decoding Shared Library (miui), pkgId: 16
I: Decoding Shared Library (android.miui), pkgId: 17
I: Decoding values */* XMLs...
I: Baksmaling classes.dex...
I: Copying assets and libs...
I: Copying unknown files...
I: Copying original files...
Starting with the version 28.0.3 of the Android SDK build tools,
the internal ids of the items of an array bag seems to have changed.
Because of those changes, array resources were no longer decoded correctly.
They were decoded as style resources.
Instead of using the id of the first item within a resource bag,
the name of the res type spec is now used to choose the correct
resource bag value to create.
Note: a list of "legal names" for resource types can be found in the source code of aapt2.
When I am decompiling an apk, I got this exception:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at brut.androlib.res.data.ResResSpec.<init>(ResResSpec.java:42)
