Our chipset vendor gives a drop of the Android platform with hundreds of useless modules. Some are included using LOCAL_MODULE_TAGS := optional debug but I don't want this module to show up in any build at all. Some are included by doing PRODUCT_PACKAGES += junk-app. I could go through all the Android.mk files one at a time cleaning this stuff up but that is tiresome and problematic for merging if the vendor gives us a new drop.
I can use LOCAL_OVERRIDES_PACKAGES to get rid of the PRODUCT_PACKAGES but that doesn't work on shared libraries saved to /system/vendor/bin or prebuilt files that are copied in /system/etc/.
The ones with LOCAL_MODULE_TAGS set to values that include eng or debug are the most annoying.
So there doesn't seem to be any silver bullet, here was my strategy:
debug and eng tags from the LOCAL_MODULE_TAGS in a bunch of makefiles (tedious but no other obvious choice)ifneq ($(TARGET_VENDOR), mycompany) to get rid of things added to PRODUCT_PACKAGES