Browse .apk structure on android phone and compute file digest

How the .apk installation process works on device? Is the .apk file just copied to some place and kind of installer application extracts the application information, register somehow the application to environment, extract also the icon and put it on the application launch screen? Or the .apk content is extracted and files are copied to various folders and the .apk file itself is deleted?

I am asking to understand if there is any possibility on device to browse the .apk file structure and its content and access in read-only mode directly the assets, res folders, AndroidManifest.xml, the dex file and also used libraries (.jar or .so)?

The reason I am asking is that I am looking for possibilit开发者_StackOverflowy to read into memory .dex, .jar or .so files like arbitrary binary files (e.g. by using the File class) for the purpose of computing a message digest from its content (i.e. using md5 or other hash method)...

BR STeN

The APK is copied onto the device, usually into the /system/app directory. The APK is not extracted or unzipped until it is used, so if you want to probe the files you'll need to do the decompression and extraction yourself.