[TIMOB-1450] Support installing to SD card on Android 2.2

GitHub Issue	n/a
Type	New Feature
Priority	Medium
Status	Closed
Resolution	Fixed
Resolution Date	2011-04-17T01:56:12.000+0000
Affected Version/s	n/a
Fix Version/s	Release 1.6.0 M03
Components	Android
Labels	android, feature, froyo, release-1.6.0, sdcard
Reporter	Ralf Pfeiffer
Assignee	Don Thorp
Created	2011-04-15T02:53:08.000+0000
Updated	2011-04-17T01:56:12.000+0000

Description

Since internal storage is very small on many Android phones, users are pretty leery about large app packages. A new feature in Android 2.2 (Froyo) is allowing applications to be installed to the SD card / mass storage instead of internal storage, or later moved there:

http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/install-location.html"> http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/install-location.html

The application manifest needs to declare support for this:

'To allow the system to install your application on the external storage, modify your manifest file to include the android:installLocation attribute in the element, with a value of either "preferExternal" or "auto".'

Comments

Don Thorp 2011-04-15
To support this feature we will have to move to API-8 tooling and leave minSdkVersion at 4. This could cause some backward compatibility issues so we'll need a full regression pass if we do it. We might also need to find a way to force using API 4 tooling so we can verify we haven't tried to use any new APIs in a non-backward compatible way.
Taazza 2011-04-15
More and more android devices are shipping with 2.2 in India with low memory on board. Most people install the apps on the SD card because of this issue. Can you pls push this 1.5.1? Otherwise it would be a missed opportunity. We are already hearing complaints of crashing :(

Thoughts?
Don Thorp 2011-04-15
@Taazza you might be able to accomplish it with 1.5.0. You'll need to set the api tooling level to 8 in your tiapp.xml and add the declaration to enable it as well. I'll move it to 1.5.1 for consideration, but it may slide further out
Don Thorp 2011-04-15
Nathaniel, verify if this can be done via configuration with 1.5.0. If not figure out what we need to do to support the feature.
Taazza 2011-04-15
We will check it at our end. Meanwhile any updates from Nathaniel which pushed this to 1.6? Thank you!
Don Thorp 2011-04-15
We are working on scheduling and tickets will be moved around as we finalize schedules and adapt to resources.
Don Thorp 2011-04-15
This is supported without and changes required as of 1.5.1. I tested with KS by adding the following entries in tiapp.xml in the android section.
```
    <tool-api-level>8</tool-api-level>
       <manifest android:installLocation="auto">
           <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="4" />
       </manifest>
   
```
These links are handy references.

http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/install-location.html"> App Install Location http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/manifest-element.html#install"> android:installLocation

Setting to resolved since I basically did the testing during the research.

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