[Ovmsdev] Android code for OVMS

[Mark Webb-Johnson]

It appears that we're in a mess with the Android code base. The Android project Sonny had worked on containing updates to the OVMS Android App has been accidentally deleted, and the latest updates to the code lost. The NAS backup arrangement that Sonny had in place has also failed, and there is no backup.

Sonny apologizes, and has tried hard to recover the files, but cannot. He is also still tied up with work commitments, and can't help much for the next month or two.

We still have the code base in github, but that is quite old as it has not been updated with the improvements made in recent months. Primarily the settings screen, partial support for groups, and support for tablets. It is the tablet support that is causing problems with new high-res phones (as it is incorrectly identifying these as tablets) - I suspect that the settings code is the main thing we want to retain.

I have tried to reverse-compile the Android code from the APK in the marketplace, and while the resulting code looks pretty good, the resources are not reverse-compilable, and look like they would take a significant amount of work to repair.

My approach has been to take the github version, compile it, decompile it, and compare that with the decompiled version of the latest android market APK - applying patch duffs where necessary. The code looks good, and seems to only need minor tidy-ups. But, the resources are a mess. It seems the decompile process retains code symbols, but not resource symbols. The resource IDs and tags end up as numbers.

I'm really not familiar with Android development, so am not sure how feasible that approach would be. It looked very easy and successful to start with.

So, we are faced with a decision:

1. Someone more experienced with Android development comes up with a brilliant solution to finish off the reverse compilation of the APK to get back the latest version. I don't mind stepping in with the 'donkey work', but I really don't know where to start. What are those "R" class files - they look like they may be the key?

2. We start again with the code as it was a few months ago, and try to take it forward from there.

3. We investigate cross-platform development environments that could perhaps give us a more unified appearance across the the different platforms, as well as support for Windows Phone and others.

What do people think?

Mark