While I agree that it's not a resource-friendly or "good" solution, it's the only one - as long as no better solution (for the various things that can be done with logs) is implemented on an SDK-level.
Also, > -- there's no refined access to the logs, you either get everything or nothing. isn't true - you can use a lot of switches and filters to get only what you're interested in (e.g. "-I" for only the "Information"-level logs.) If you mean this from a permissions-point of view, it could be implemented with e.g. "READ_SYSTEM_LOGS", etc. for a more fine-grained access model. On Jul 29, 2012 7:02 PM, "Kristopher Micinski" <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 1:35 AM, Chris Stratton <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jul 29, 12:18 am, Alex Pruss <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> These kinds of things can provide a lot of value to users, and disabling > >> log access forces users to have to root their devices to do these > things. > > > > That's not the real problem though. Reading the logs was never the > > right way to customize the behavior of the device to the current > > running activity - it was at most a crude workaround. > > > > The real "problem" is that android is designed with the idea that apps > > should not alter the system's behavior on each other, and has > > extremely limited mechanisms for recognizing "special" apps that would > > be permitted to do so. > > > > While a real solution for that is long overdue, it's also a much more > > complicated design conversation than the topic at hand. > > > > I would agree with Chris' assessment on this. Moreover, forgoing a > more involved and specialized solution for secure system extensions, > having the logs as a workaround is a dangerous and hacky solution. > Why? > -- the log structure could change, breaking apps. > -- forcing developers to parse logs in this way is a horrible and > taxing design strategy. > -- there's no refined access to the logs, you either get everything > or nothing. > -- it's fairly well recognized that you can do a whole lot of > inference about the device and its users with log access.. > -- not to mention dumb apps that dump things like passwords and the > like.. (it's also been shown that most apps use http rather than > https..) > -- polling the logs like this really sucks for battery life, and > encourages the everlasting service antipattern. > > kris > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
