[OnePlus 3 & 3T Cross Device Development] Deleted member 4405529:
General thoughts on gapp packages

Note: Consider "Bit Gapps" as place holder for any other gapps vendor then opengapps. ;)

From my expirience the nightly (or daily for that matter) automatic builds are the biggest drawback of open gapps:

Since these builds arn't tested but just automatic build. This results in quite some broken packages. I've made it my personal habbit to stick with a build, after it has proofed to work (once installed gservices as well as gapps are updated from play store - this means: if you use e.g. an one year old (proofed to work) gapps build used on a clean flash is updated to latest gservices/gapps shortly after first boot.

The lack of knowing about the playstore updates makes users think it's a good idea to "update" the flashable gapps zip, which may lead to issues: some of the gapps and gservices settings are stored in a sqlite db. If the playstore updates contain a sqlite update, which is not present in the new nightly gapps zip and you wipe system but not data to flash that zip (and call it an "update), the db engine is downgraded below the version of the db on data you will get strange side effects and only a clean flash will recover (some of the more common issues in that situation are "lost" notifications, issues with (also third party) apps using cloud messaging gservice and/or switched or absent sounds).

This doesn't mean that bitgapps are better then opengapps - but nightly/daily updated gapps packahes are more prune to user error then gapps builds updated every few months and receive thoroughly testing before shipping.

I completely agree here. If one looks at e.g. https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Stock-Package and search for "replaces", you'll see what is replaced in the system partition. The more obvious drawbacks are, that if you install stock opengapps e.g. the rom shipped webview is gone (in opposite to installing chrome webview from playstore, which let you choose at runtime which webview should be used - this also goes for launcher, telephone app, email, contacts, etc).

Even worse (and much less obvious) is the point, that if you install an app with own libs (*.so) and c-bindings (*.jni) from playstore they are installed within the app and are used only in the app's sessions. If you use the same app from the gapps flashable zip, those libs and bindings are installed outside the app dir in the system partition replacing their rom shipped counterparts: all services and apps - even the rom shipped services and apps - need to use the ones from the gapps package. The rom is massively changed in a way not controlable (and not supportable) by the rom dev.

A last word of warning: never ever downgrade a gapps package (e.g. from stock to nano) and install the missing apps from playstore. The gapps db entries for a system gapp (flashable zip) are different from user gapp (playstore install). Upgrading from e.g. nano to stock (not recommended; see above!!!) will work, iff all stock contained apps are uninstalled before the upgrade.

Again this doesn't mean bit apps is supiror to opengapps or vice versa. It just means the nightly/daily updates arn't an advantage by it's own. You are always safe as long as you know what you are doing; this includes to check exactly what each package installs and replaces. Obviously it doesn't make any sense to complain about e.g. laggy webview in the rom's thtead when using opengapps stock package.