What are the unsigned apk files created by Android Studio?

Question

When I go the below folder in my project strcuture:

C:..\AndroidstudioProjects\ParentAppDir\app\build\outputs\apk

I see the below two files

1. app-debug.apk
2. app-debug-unaligned.apk

What do they represent? Are these similar to the apk found in bin for the Eclipse IDE?

Answer 1

See why unaligned apk is needed? for some relevant discussion. zipalign is used to optimize app-debug-unaligned.apk, producing app-debug.apk. I assume both are left as outputs so that it is possible (if necessary) to check whether zipalign is working properly when debugging a build issue.