Hi David, The threads you’ve linked are dealing with 2 slightly different problems.
The reference to the Kivy mailing list is about the Android API target version. When you build an Android project, you specify a *minimum* SDK version, and a *target* SDK version. The Minimum version specifies which APIs are available; the Target specifies exactly what behavior those APIs will have. For example, consider an API for a new feature foo(). The feature is introduced in API level 20; the behavior is modified slightly (say, to increase security, or change the handling of a default value) in API level 22. a) If you specify a minimum API of 19, the method foo() won’t be available (no matter the target version). However, you will be able to run your app on really old *and* really new devices. b) If you specify a minimum API of 21, and a target of 21, the method foo() will exist, and will have the “old” behavior. The app won’t run on *really* old devices, but will run on anything supporting API 21 or newer. c) If you specify a minimum API of 21, and a target of 23, the method foo() will exist, and will have the “new” behavior. The app will run on the same devices as case (b) d) If you specify a minimum API of 23, and a target of 23, the method foo() will exist, will have the “new” behavior, and will only run on the most recent devices. The Android blog post that you’ve referenced is about what will be allowed on the Google Play store; they’re setting limits on what you can upload to the Play store based on the *target* API. They’re essentially ensuring that the “new” behavior for all their APIs is being used (mostly for security reasons), and enforcing that by preventing anyone from (easily) distributing an app that uses old (potentially insecure) behaviours. This isn’t an Android specific thing either - iOS has a similar API versioning policy. The only difference is that iOS’s versions actually match their OS version numbers, rather than the triumvirate of naming that Android uses (Lollipop, V5.0 and API level 21 are all the same thing; Lollipop can also refer to V5.1/API level 22). The references on the BeeWare chat are about Android Studio, the Android build system, and the changes to the Android gradle target. That versioning is (annoyingly) completely independent of the Android API version numbering. Over the last year, the Gradle format has radically changed, and the migration path hasn't been obvious. This is something we (BeeWare) have been wrestling with for about 6 months, but we haven’t had a lot of luck finding people who know both (a) Python and (b) Android who have volunteered to help out. Yours, Russ Magee %-) On 11 September 2018 at 8:29:09 pm, David Boddie ([email protected]) wrote: I noticed recently that there was some discussion about changes to recent versions of Android that could cause problems for downstream projects. Google requiring API Target 26 in 2018: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/kivy-dev/hbufnwBezH0 pybee/general messages: https://gitter.im/pybee/general?at=5b3d4d673d8f71623d5d1cd1 https://gitter.im/pybee/general?at=5b407f8e63042f2df35da1ab Can anyone say what the major issues were? David _______________________________________________ Mobile-sig mailing list [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-sig
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