# ActionBarSherlock - A Love Story (Part 1)

DevFeed: [ActionBarSherlock - A Love Story (Part 1)](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/actionbarsherlock-a-love-story-part-1-20910.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://jakewharton.com/actionbarsherlock-a-love-story-part-1/>)

Published: 2011-12-01T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Jake Wharton](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/jake-wharton.md>)

Topics: [Library](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/library.md>), [Android](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/android.md>), [releases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/releases.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>)

Tags: [android](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android.md>), [compatibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compatibility.md>), [dependencies](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dependencies.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [library](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/library.md>), [releases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/releases.md>)

## AI overview

The first post in a series about ActionBarSherlock announces that version 4.0 will drop Android 1.6 support. The decision follows Android 1.6's declining platform share and a redesign that makes the library's core action bar independent of the compatibility library, while retaining optional tight integration.

## Source excerpt

The library has been out for nearly 9 months already and has seen 22 releases across 3 major versions. Fast approaching is the next major release, version 4.0. This will bring the full functionaity of Ice Cream Sandwich's action bar to all relevant APIs and will be what I consider the first true release. I'm going to be writing a series of posts which talks about some various development decisions and the reasoning behind them as well as a bit of the history of the library. The series will culminate in the formal announcement and release of v4.0 some time in the near future. So strap in and hold on, with this first post I'm just going to tear off the band-aid... I am officially dropping 1.6 support from ActionBarSherlock 4.0. This post originally was going to be a call for arguments against this, but with the release of the latest platform distributions I'm rounding 1.6's share down to 1% which was my mental event horizon for its support. This will likely upset a few people. I know of a lot of apps leveraging my library that still support 1.6. I even have an implementer who supports 1.5 because he has an extremely niche market with a bunch of users who own the Motorola i1! I've said time and time again to developers that as long as the compatibility library supported 1.6 then so would I. For ActionBarSherlock 3.x this was an important thing because the library was so tightly integrated with the compat lib that it actually became a near drop-in replacement for it since its classes were included. This will all change with ABS 4.0. I have chosen to take the library in a completely separate direction. While the next post will talk about the trials and tribulations of dealing with having a library which extends (and effectively replaces) the official compat lib, all we need to know for now is that the core library will now have zero dependencies. Since the library is no longer immediately dependent on the compatibility library my justification for forcing support for Andro