Development

Rants about application development technologies.

Introducing PatchRadar 1.0

/ Development, Mobile, Tools

Staying up to date on the latest changes in your favorite games and software can be a tedious process. Today, we invite you to download PatchRadar, a mobile application available for both Android and iOS platforms, designed to keep you informed about the latest updates for your games and software.

This is just the start of this journey, and your feedback is most welcome and invaluable to us as we continue to enhance the app’s features and performance.

PatchRadar

Key Features of PatchRadar:

  • On-Device Notifications: Stay informed with alerts about new patches and updates for your subscribed games and applications, ensuring you’re always up-to-date.
  • Extensive Database: PatchRadar monitors a wide range of software and games, providing comprehensive coverage to cater to diverse user interests.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Designed with simplicity in mind, PatchRadar offers an intuitive interface that allows you to manage your subscriptions effortlessly.
  • Customizable Preferences: Tailor your notification settings to receive updates only for the software and games you care about, minimizing unnecessary alerts.
  • Game Reviews & Pricing Data: Get information on game reviews and price changes to help you make informed decisions.

Introducing PatchRadar 1.0 Read More »

Flutter, DevDrive and Windows Defender

/ Development

Like many SDKs, Dart/Flutter consist of hundreds of thousands of files. This easily becomes a performance problem on Windows, especially with AV solutions like Windows Defender, and results on slow code completion, analysis and generally sluggish performance of tools, e.g. in Visual Studio Code.

One solution to this problem is to disable the AV solution or just exclude the directories containing the SDKs. We will skip the explanation why this is generally a bad idea, but there is an alternative solution, namely Windows 11’s new Dev Drives, basically a VHDX using ReFs. Windows Defender does use a different mode of scanning files for all DevDrives, so this is a neat solution.

We just need to move all the Flutter/Dart SDK files to the newly created DevDrive (e.g. D:\Flutter), but that still does not yield the expected results. This is because the analyzer and public cache are still by default stored in the user’s home directories.

Moving these to the DevDrive significantly speeds up the analyzer, compilation, and all other tasks. These Environment Variables can be used to specify the new location of the folders:

ANALYZER_STATE_LOCATION_OVERRIDED:\.dart-Server
PUB_CACHED:\.pub-cache
GRADLE_USER_HOMED:\.gradle

Flutter, DevDrive and Windows Defender Read More »

F(x)tec Pro1-X

/ Development, Mobile

If you are a keyboard afficionado, you may have heard about the F(x)tec Pro1 and Pro1-X phones with integrated keyboards. Together with some peers of the LineageOS team, I have ported LineageOS over to the Pro1-X. It is still early stages, but eventually, LineageOS will be available as a shipping option for the phone!

Head over to my XDA thread, Github or the LineageOS Gerrit review if you would like to check out progress and/or help out.

F(x)tec Pro1-X Read More »

LineageOS 20

/ Development, Mobile

Some more good news for the end of 2022: LineageOS 20 has just been released. And I have had a hand at it, as the main maintainer for:

Sadly, of course, the Sony devices will not be updated beyond Lineage 18.1, but still! You may now enjoy a whole slew of improvements if you own a OnePlus 5/5T: better GPS locking, improved audio quality, faster UI performance just to name a few.

We poured a lot of hard work and blood, sweat and tears into this, so please do enjoy. This is also a great opportunity to thank all the people who donated equipment for this effort, please have a look at the hall of fame!

There are some exciting things coming up, so keep watching… and have a happy new year everyone!

LineageOS 20 Read More »

LineageOS for dumpling, onyx and castor

/ Development, Mobile

After software support for OnePlus 5T ran out 2 years ago, we spent a LOT of time getting OnePlus 5 and 5T up to speed on LineageOS. By now it is safe to say that LineageOS on these devices is superior to OxygenOS, especially in terms of performance and battery usage. We ported over EAS (energy aware scheduling), fixed tons of big and small errors so now everything is working smoothly. The latest official version is based on Android 12, but the version for Android 13 is in an even better state already, so it will be released rather soon!

Also, some legacy devices got some much needed love, such as Sony Xperia Tablet Z2 WiFi and LTE variants. Both of them are now running LineageOS 18.1 based on Android 11 just fine.

Go check it all out at the LineageOS Download Center.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the donors who donated money and in some cases even devices for me to help improve the situation. Your help is very much appreciated, and you guys are all in the Hall of Fame!

LineageOS for dumpling, onyx and castor Read More »

Android Storage Access Framework woes after reboot

/ Development

There seems to be a lot of confusion amongst developers how to get persistible permissions when using the SAF. Wasted some hours on this, so it is worth a note here.

To get the average file open dialog using the SAF, one could do this:

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT);
intent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_OPENABLE);
intent.setType("*/*");
startActivityForResult(i, 0);

That works perfectly fine, but after a reboot, the permissions are gone, and opening the same file (without opening the dialog again) will fail. There are lots of resources on the Internet that tell developers to add some arguments when calling the Intent. This is wrong! Passing these to the intent is completely useless:

intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION); // Don't do this
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_WRITE_URI_PERMISSION); // Also no!
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_PERSISTABLE_URI_PERMISSION); // NO!

Instead, a single call to takePersistableUriPermission will retain permissions even after a reboot:

protected void onPropertyRequestResult(int propertyRequestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    getContentResolver().takePersistableUriPermission(data.getData(), Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION | Intent.FLAG_GRANT_WRITE_URI_PERMISSION);
}

Android Storage Access Framework woes after reboot Read More »

The nightly is dark and full of terrors

/ Development, Mobile

Today, I am happy to announce the start of CyanogenMod 13 nightlies for Xperia Tablet Z (pollux) and Xperia Tablet Z Wifi (pollux_windy). This means CM13 is considered stable enough for daily use on these devices, so the terrors should be rather limited. Anyone interested can find the official downloads at the usual location. Active development on the fusion3 platform is ongoing, I will attempt to shift focus to the phones now.

The nightly is dark and full of terrors Read More »

Lollipop Fusion Complete

/ Development, Mobile

As of today, all Sony Xperia devices based on the Fusion3 board (Xperia Z, ZL, ZR, Tablet Z, Tablet Z WiFi) are getting official CyanogenMod 12.1! When I first started looking at these devices in December 2014, the CM12 source code would not even compile, let alone boot, and even the recovery was broken.

Well, here we are, hundreds of commits and quite a lot of annoyances later: F2FS is now supported, a plethora of kernel changes and the new BFQ scheduler made the user experience better than ever, the latest proprietary blobs are integrated, SELinux is properly set up, and a ton of reorganization and cleanup has been done – for all of Sony’s MSM8960 devices and beyond.

Still many things to do, but for today, I’m lighting a cigar! If you have one of these devices, check out GET.CM and give it a whirl. There is a truly fantastic team of developers at Cyanogen and CyanogenMod, and without them, none of us could enjoy mobile computing quite like we do.

Lollipop Fusion Complete Read More »

Carpe Noctem #2

/ Development, Mobile

After a long, arduous development road, I’ve enabled CyanogenMod nightly builds for the Sony Xperia Z. This brings nightlies directly from CM11 to CM12.1, which hopefully all users will enjoy. Thanks to everyone at my XDA thread, especially Andy van der Steen, who lent me his phone for development. Without that, I would never have come this far.

Carpe Noctem #2 Read More »

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