The mailing list for users of the eduroam Configuration Assistant Tool (CAT)

[Ralf Paffrath <paffrath AT dfn.de>]

Hi Stefan,

thank you Stefan.

Best regards,

Ralf

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On 04 Feb 2016, at 11:20, Stefan Winter <stefan.winter AT restena.lu> wrote:

Hello,

the Android app sources are now ported to the public SVN repository and
ready for your viewing pleasure.

Please follow the instructions described under "SVN Access" here:

https://forge.geant.net/forge/display/CAT/Downloads

The source to the Android app is, unsurprisingly, under androidsource/trunk.

During our relocation of source from the previous repo to this publicly
accessible one, unfortunately SVN commit history was lost. But that
doesn't strike me as terribly important.

I like to understand why people need/want source code to the app.

Is it just curiosity, or the desire to audit us? That's fine; please do
send bug reports etc. to the dedicated App contact address
"playstore AT eduroam.org".

If however people want the source thinking that it's a good idea to fork
the code, let me clearly state that I want to avoid that. Forks are
always a matter of last resort when the code owner is unreasonable. I
like to think of us being reasonable persons; I would much rather accept
patches if you find something in the app not to your liking. That way,
the entire Android user community can benefit from such fixes. Please do
talk to us before forking.

Greetings,

Stefan Winter

Am 28.01.2016 um 12:37 schrieb Ralf Jung:

Hi,

Okay, let me rephrase it then as: we are not intentionally closed
source; it just happens to be so right now due to historical developments.

Sure, I understand.

It IS our intention to move the code to the other SVN tree with
anonymous read access to the source.

Great :) And thanks a lot for making this happen!

You say "easily avoid" and that the replacement is "very badly
documented" in the same paragraph here.

That's a bit of a contradiction; if one needs to search for hours for
undocumented API calls then it is not at all "easy" to use those APIs.

Well, okay, you are right. I meant something more like, if developers
care and if they knew, then it's not like they would have to
re-implement half the API or something.

However, at some point some probably very sadistic person in the know
let me know that it *is* possible in older versions but only via an
undocumented API call, and that it'd be easy to find it if I knew where
to look. And then not telling me where to look. I spent hours and days
looking through Android source (still occasional nightmares from that
;-) ) and couldn't find it. That's time burnt for nothing.

Oh wow, what a mean person...

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-microg-gmscore-floss-play-services-t3217616>

This seems to be about end-users who want to use apps which would
usually require Google Play Services to not need them. It doesn't seem
to help developers with anything?

No, sorry for the confusion - that was the footnote [1], just giving you
an explanation of what I meant when I said "open-source reimplementation
of the Play Services".

As I said, I don't know any Android programming, all I do is tell gradle
to compile stuff. I can ask a friend for the details about that API, if
you are interested. The link was not meant to be those details.

That said, the µG project is *also* about re-implementing the
application side of the Play Services, so that you can create a fully
open-source apk file. Right now, if you use Play Services, there is
proprietary Google code injected into your App. This is of course
alpha-quality, too, and probably even less tested than the services-side
of the Play Services, so I'm not at all advocating that you should use
that in eduroamCAT, just explaining the scope of µG and what it has to
do with app developers.

One needs to be very desparate to fall back to such hacks.

Kind of, yeah ;-) . That, or curious and convinced that this is the
"Right" (TM) thing to do, and willing to take the consequences.

The "hacks" part is only necessary because of Google's (and the Custom
ROM authors) lack of cooperation, of course.

I'm sure Gareth can do that - if our attempts to move source are not
finished soon anyway. I have opened a ticket in our project for that,
and hope it will be resolved within hours or days. I hope the delay is
acceptable.

It will be probably a few weeks until my institution is registered in
the eduroamCAT database at all (or whatever time it takes to do that),
so right now, the App would not even be helpful for me. So, yes, I'm
totally fine waiting a little.

Kind regards,
Ralf
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Stefan WINTER
Ingenieur de Recherche
Fondation RESTENA - Réseau Téléinformatique de l'Education Nationale et
de la Recherche
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