Re: [android-developers] Including custom in client app

That's strange.  We have a setup where we have a bunch of Bs that are paid (and not necessarily cheap) so the assumption is we'd hear from people who buy a B and cannot access its contents due to a SecurityException.  Probably a majority of our users are on Android 4.x.  Also, I have a Nexus 7 currently with 4.2.2 that has never given me either the error message, or the problem itself.

I'm wondering now why it sometimes happens and sometimes not.

The explanation Dianne Hackborn gave in the thread you linked to doesn't make much sense to me as these are custom permissions we're talking about.  I've never been asked to confirm a custom permission (on Android 2 or 4), nor does it seem to make any sense as the permission is just an implementation detail of how our packages transfer their data among themselves - nothing for the user to allow or deny.

On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 11:29 AM, marten <marten.gajda@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am Samstag, 1. Juni 2013 17:28:31 UTC+2 schrieb latimerius:

On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Marten Gajda <mar...@dmfs.org> wrote:

I have an existing app A that's already installed by a couple of users and I have developed a new app B that has a content provider and custom permissions for access control. Now I want to add optional support for that new content provider in app A.

Just adding a <uses-permission> tag to app A won't work because all users would have to install app B before they upgrade to the new app A. Otherwise the new permission is not granted with the following message:

W/PackageManager(  201): Not granting permission my.package.permission.PERMISSION_X to package my.other.package because it was previously installed without

Hello Marten, I'm slightly confused at this point.  The above log message sounds to me as if you defined your permission in app A and requested it in app B - the other way around compared to what you explanation above seems to suggest.

I should have changed the log message to

W/PackageManager(  201): Not granting permission B.PERMISSION_X to package A because it was previously installed without

that's what I get actually. The problem seems to be, that since B.PERMISSION_X was not known at the time A was installed (but B wasn't) the permission had been ignored.

I'm not the only one experiencing this issue: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/android-platform/jQBhijWPcTQ
 

At any rate, if you define your permission in app B (using the <permission> element) and request it in app A (using the <uses-permission> element) it should work.  If app A is installed before app B you should just see a log message stating that the custom permission is unknown.

I see that message, but when I install B I get the message above.

 

 This is fine as app B who defines it is not installed yet.  As soon as you install it the permission is defined by B and granted to A.

That doesn't seem to work on all devices.

Which Android version are you testing on? 

The issue has been reported on SDK levels 15, 16 and 17. I didn't test earlier versions yet.
 

My question is: Is that guaranteed to work in future Android releases? Is there a chance any future Android version will complain about the duplicate definition of the permission?

This is something I'd like to know too.  I"m not hopeful though Google tells us before stuff breaks... 

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