Hi Joe, Can you provide more specific reasons why you think using reflection is problematic in this case? This seems to me like exactly the sort of situation where reflection is an appropriate solution.
There are valid reasons why many app developers might not be ready to move to API level 23: 1) They have an app which is stabilizing or in maintenance mode and they don't want to risk destabilization by moving to a new major Cordova version, Cordova Android platform, and Android API level. 2) They are using a 3rd-party plugin which has not yet been updated to request Android permissions as required by API level 23. There are probably a lot of plugins affected, since access to any of the following things on Android M requires runtime permission requests: calendar, contacts, phone, camera, microphone, location, beacons, sensors, SMS, storage. 3) They might not have the capacity or ability to test their app on devices running Android M. Because API 23 enables the new permissions model only on Android M, it requires testing on that platform. In any of the above cases, developers might still like to benefit from some of the major bug fixes in those 5 popular core plugins mentioned below. Or even if they weren't specifically looking for bug fixes, it would be a much better experience if adding or updating one of those plugins would just work, rather than failing on Android. The explanation for the failure will not be obvious to many users, if they overlooked the warning when installing the plugin or if they were using another tool to add the plugin where the warning wasn't surfaced. Of course developers should be encouraged to upgrade to the latest most secure highest-quality version of Cordova. But the encouragement does not need to be so forceful. This proposed change gives developers more time to upgrade, and allows for more choice about when to upgrade individual parts (plugins) rather than limiting them to all-or-nothing. Jason -----Original Message----- From: Joe Bowser [mailto:bows...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 4:45 PM To: dev <dev@cordova.apache.org> Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Core Plugins and Android API 23 I'm very against this idea because we've been burned by using reflection in the past. I also feel that this allows developers be terrible and to stick with older, more insecure versions of Cordova, which is the main reason I'm against it. I don't think that requiring API level 23 is a problem. There's nothing saying that they can't use prior versions of plugins with their applications, but we shouldn't be using reflection because these users are too lazy to update their Android environment or get their plugins to work. I'm almost certain that this will burn us in the future when some users wants some API that we removed for a good reason. Seriously, if we allow this to happen, what was the point of even incrementing the version to Android 5.0? Also, do we have to basically write the apps for our users as well at this point, because they're unable to deal with change? On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 4:08 PM, Richard Knoll <rikn...@microsoft.com> wrote: > Hey all, > > As has been very thoroughly discussed at this point, the > cordova-android > 5.0.0 update included breaking changes for plugins in response to the > new permission model that Android Marshmallow introduced. > Unfortunately, this means that our plugins that took advantage of the > new permission APIs are no longer able to build on Cordova platforms before > cordova-android 5.0.0. > Really, this update only came down to two new methods in CordovaInterface: > one for requesting permissions and one for checking them. Since this > is such a minor API change, it is trivial for us to modify the core > plugins that require permissions to use reflection and allow projects > that are still using the earlier Android APIs to keep using them. I > have done so for the camera plugin as an example [1]. All it took was > writing a helper class for permissions that I made general enough to > be easily included in the other core plugins. > > This change gives users who are not ready to embrace Android API 23 > some more time before they are forced to update (e.g. if they are > still using some other plugins that have yet to be updated). It also > helps us reduce some of the current plugin versioning woes we're > having. Anyone using Cordova 5.x stands to benefit, since this can > prevent some confusion and frustration caused by broken builds when > their cli fetches the latest plugins. In my opinion, the cost of > copying a helper class is worth that potential payoff. What do others think? > > I did a little testing with my modified camera plugin and > cordova-android > 3.7.1 (which I arbitrarily chose) and it built/seemed to work fine. If > people support this idea, I can do a bit more testing and make PRs for > the other plugins. > > For the record, the affected plugins are as follows: > cordova-plugin-camera > cordova-plugin-contacts > cordova-plugin-file > cordova-plugin-geolocation > cordova-plugin-media > > Thanks, > Richard > [1] > https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugin-camera/compare/master...rikno > ll:reflection?expand=1 >
