Hi all,
I would like to make a request for the people who are making custom builds
of Android for users to install on their phones.
If you are going to allow the user to keep Market on their phone, and are
adding any new features, please do this the official way: include your own
shared library with the features that applications use, rather than having
magic hacks in the framework for them. (Some of the things I am talking
about is redefining MotionEvent for multi-touch data, or I believe the magic
permission that is used for apps to be root.)
In the source base you can find the PlatformLibrary sample code, which shows
the official way to add custom extensions to the platform. Some key points
about this:
- For applications to use your new features, they must explicitly link with
the library (via <uses-library> in their manifest), ensuring there are no
conflicts with future changes to the platform or other vendors.
- Market keeps track of the libraries available on a device and the
libraries needed by an application, to only show applications to the user
that are compatible with a device. No more need for for developers to say
"works only with rooted phones" or what not, no more making users dig
through apps that are not relevant to them.
- This allows you to supply an AVD add-on for developers to use your APIs in
the standard development environment.
Some examples of how you may use this:
- For adding multitouch to the platform, the MotionEvent API should be left
alone. Instead, you can add new (hidden) parts to it containing the
multitouch information. Then in your platform library you can have a class
like MultiTouchAccessor that allows applications to retrieve the extended
multitouch data from the event for example like this:
public class MultiTouchAccessor {
public static float getSecondaryX(MotionEvent event) {
return event.getSeconaryX();
}
public static float getSecondaryY(MotionEvent event) {
return event.getSeconaryY();
}
}
For a permission that allows an application to be root, it is okay to add
the permission to the framework as long as it is not in the android.* or
com.android.* namespace, but in a namespace someone else owns. However,
there still must be some kind of shared library (even if it is a stub) for
the application to request along with it, and the package manager should not
allow the application get this permission unless they also request the
shared library. This is to ensure that developers mark their apps as
requiring this new "api", so that market can filter them.
Thanks!
--
Dianne Hackborn
Android framework engineer
hack...@android.com
Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to
provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such
questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and
answer them.
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