What is AndroidX?

Question

I am reading about a room library of Android. I see they changed package android to androidx. I did not understand that. Can someone explain, pleas

Answer 1

This article Android Jetpack: What do the recent announcements mean for Android’s Support Library? explains it well

Today, many consider the Support Library an essential part of Android app development, to the point where it’s used by 99 percent of apps in the Google Play store. However, as the Support Library has grown, inconsistencies have crept in surrounding the library’s naming convention.

Initially, the name of each package indicated the minimum API level supported by that package, for example, support-v4. However, version 26.0.0 of the Support Library increased the minimum API to 14, so today many of the package names have nothing to do with the minimum supported API level. When support-v4 and the support-v7 packages both have a minimum API of 14, it’s easy to see why people get confused!

To clear up this confusion, Google is currently refactoring the Support Library into a new Android extension library (AndroidX) package structure. AndroidX will feature simplified package names, as well as Maven groupIds and artifactIds that better reflect each package’s content and its supported API levels.

With the current naming convention, it also isn’t clear which packages are bundled with the Android operating system, and which are packaged with your application’s APK (Android Package Kit). To clear up this confusion, all the unbundled libraries will be moved to AndroidX’s androidx.* namespace, while the android.* package hierarchy will be reserved for packages that ship with the Android operating system.