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

[Jørn Åne de Jong <jornane.dejong AT surf.nl>]

On 14/06/2022 14:58, Lukas Wringer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am on Android 11 with the beta Version of geteduroam. But that crash
> is not really my main point.
>
> My problem is, that for users with Android 11 and up it is a lottery if
> they can use eduroam or not (either CAT works or not).
>
> The proposed solution geteduroam' can only be used if the user is
> willing to enroll as a beta tester, because the live version breaks
> protocoll and MIME-type settings and may not even work with Android 12
> because Google messed up the API again.
>
> And on top of all that there are the quirks that come with the "Wi-Fi
> suggestion API" that hasn't even been fully implemented as per
> https://github.com/geteduroam/ionic-app/issues/91 which is lying
> dormant sind Nov. 2020

Hi Lukas

Sorry I haven't been able to get back to you earlier.

The current beta, as you have experienced, may crash on Android 11. 
This is due to a bug with early releases of Android 11, where this bug 
incorrectly triggers and is not catchable for the application.  In other 
words, the app won't know if invoking the API will cause a crash.

Google fixed this with an update to Android 11, but testing shows that 
not every phone gets this fix, even phones that do get Android 11 
updates; the fix is apparently not backported by some vendors.

We haven't updated issue 91, but that's basically this.  We have a 
working implementation, that's the one in the beta, but it's not stable 
on Android 11 due to the Android bug mentioned earlier.

I haven't heard anything about Google preventing the use of the old API 
in Android 12, but what IS certain, is that we're not allowed to release 
a new version of the app in the Play Store that uses this API.  This 
leaves us with two options:

1) Keep the old app
2) Update the app and hope for the best

We know the new app in its best form will perform poor on Android 10, 
and that is may crash on Android 11.  Personally I think the logical 
conclusion will be that we release the beta for Android 12, but we would 
like some more feedback before we do that; there is no way back if it 
turns out it works worse than the app we have.

So that's the story.  There is a 3rd option, which is offering the app 
through other means than the Play Store, which can either be 3rd party 
stores or by offering .apk files.  We're going to do the latter, but I'm 
not sure it would be wise to offer this as a "recommended" solution.

--
Jørn Åne de Jong
geteduroam