[Scummvm-devel] Android keys / market account

Angus Lees alees at google.com
Tue Aug 16 06:46:50 CEST 2011


On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 06:56, Eugene Sandulenko <sev at scummvm.org> wrote:
> So what is going on with the android port on the market?

Atm, I haven't touched the market build in a long time and it's all my
fault.  Every now and then I sit down to extract the signing key for
Andre, realise I don't know anything about java's keystores and then
get distracted before finding the right documentation :/

> My current understanding that there were problems with (a) passing the
> keys (b) switching the application namespace.
>
> Also as I remember, switching the namespace will break autoupdate and
> will make old savegames inaccessible.

Yes, switching namespace makes it a new/separate package as far as
Android devices and the market are concerned.   This means no
auto-upgrade, and existing savegames and scummvmrc will be
~inaccessible since they're under the old uid with restrictive file
modes.

> Still my stance is that we would better generate a fresh keypair, put
> the application into org.scummvm. namespace and deploy it on the
> market. It has been too long without an update and is much much better
> to have saves broken than no application at all.
>
> Any thoughts?

Other issues that might want to be discussed around the same time:

- if we're breaking upgrades anyway, it would be nice to move
scummvmrc and savegames onto the SD card.
This makes it trivially easy for everyone to copy savegames on/off the
phone, which is a frequently requested feature.  Should be as simple
as changing the default path in the code, and ensuring the directory
exists before writing.

- should we remove plugins and just have one 'monolithic' package
(like on scummvm.org/downloads)?
This makes it _much_ easier for most people to use, but is too big for
ancient Android phones (G1, HTC magic/dream, etc).  Last time I did a
quick test, I don't think 1.3.0 worked on my G1 anyway :/

- if we want to *keep* the plugin packages and we're breaking upgrades
anyway, we should add a 'shared userid' to the Android manifest.
This gives us a much cleaner way to do plugin packages (that change
can be done later), but upgrading an existing package to a shared
userid is impossible.

- Again, if we're only supporting larger/recent phones, we could
remove all my custom 'run time unpacking' code and just do The Normal
Thing.
Makes startup slightly faster at the expense of more internal flash.
The main win is making it less surprising for future developers (imo).

 - Gus




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