To give some more clarity to this: The app is built in such a way as to allow certain mobile manufacturers to have our app pre-loaded on their devices. For analytics purposes, we'd like to know how much traffic comes from these preloads. The way that we do this is by including a custom identifier string directly into the app, and passing that string into the analytics.

The problem is: when the app gets updated on those devices via Google Play (which is inevitably the first thing that happens when the device is powered on), the identifier string gets overwritten. Therefore, we've added an on-boot handler (which requires the new permission), so that the app gets a chance to save the custom identifier to the settings database, which will persist across updates of the app.

Note that we don't require this permission in the production or beta versions of the app on Google Play, and it wasn't intentional to require the permission in the f-droid variant (since f-droid doesn't use Google Play). Since Stephen's patch is already merged, this will be resolved in our next release.

-Dmitry

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Stephen Niedzielski < sniedzielski@wikimedia.org> wrote:

I've opened a Phab for this issue[0].

[0] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T127479

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Bernd Sitzmann bernd@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Yes, for F-Droid the custom flavor is used. We should consider making a dedicated flavor for F-Droid to avoid this permission request there.

Regards, Bernd

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 4:11 AM, Florian Schmidt < florian.schmidt.welzow@t-online.de> wrote:

...

Hi Legoktm,

as far as I know the permission is in the custom build flavor only (it was moved from the main build channel to it in commit[1]). I'm not sure, what flavor is used for fdroid, it's using the custom channel, it get's the permission (added in [2]).

[1] https://github.com/wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia/commit/2b18cea8108b074dc... [2] https://github.com/wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia/commit/026b8ed03996d0683...

Best, Florian

-----Original-Nachricht----- Betreff: [WikimediaMobile] Android app now requires "run at startup" permission? Datum: 2016-02-19T08:29:44+0100 Von: "Legoktm" legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com An: "mobile-l" mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Hi,

When I upgrade from 2.1.137-fdroid to 2.1.141-fdroid (I fell a little behind in staying up to date), the Android Wikipedia app requests the "run at startup" permission. Is this intentional? Why does the app need to run at startup?

Thanks, -- Legoktm

---

Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

---

Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

---

Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

---

Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l