search

SecUSo / privacy-friendly-netmonitor

Privacy Friendly App that shows active network connections of installed apps.
GNU General Public License v3.0
156 stars 33 forks source link

Lower minSdkVersion to 9 #14

Closed di72nn closed 7 years ago

di72nn commented 7 years ago

It's ok to have high minSdkVersion if it is necessary, but I believe there is no such necessity so far.

Tested on Android 4.2.2 (API 17) and on Android 4.4.4 (API 19).

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

@di72nn Hey, thanks for the PR. Did you mean SDK 9 or 19? The code says 9 but you don't mention that it is tested for that version.

schillef commented 7 years ago

The Min-SDK Version of 21 (Android 5.0) was a project guideline. We don't want to support very old Android SDKs 'cause of unpatched security issues of older Android versions. We will diskuss and test the support of 4.4.4 (API 19) or 4.2.2 (API 17) though. Anyway, thanks for participating :).

di72nn commented 7 years ago

Did you mean SDK 9 or 19?

I set it as low as possible to be compatible with the support libraries.

The code says 9 but you don't mention that it is tested for that version.

I did not test it on versions lower than API 17. As long as it builds, it should be fine. If there actually are problems with older Android versions, people may at least install the app and report issues.

The Min-SDK Version of 21 (Android 5.0) was a project guideline of the SECUSO Department (University Darmstadt). We don't want to support very old Android SDKs 'cause of unpatched security issues of older Android versions.

Do you mean it as in "the app don't support older Android versions in order to push users to use newer Android version"? I'm not aware of any security implications of lowering minSdkVersion without adding new support libraries (the app already uses the support libs).

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

I guess lowering to 17 is okay. In my experience publishing for a version that is not tested often goes wrong.

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

@di72nn Thanks for clarifying.

Of course using newer libraries helps a lot. Versions lower than 4.4. have an extrem low market share. Some flaws in old versions have not been fixed according to research.

The Play Store says that apps starting from 17 cover almost 100% of devices. So, it is save to lower it to 17, if it is tested ;)

Could you change the PR to 17, then I'll accept it.

di72nn commented 7 years ago

Updated to API 17.

In my experience publishing for a version that is not tested often goes wrong.

That's understandable if you're contracted to create an app. But in case of free software (if it can't wreck havoc in case of malfunctioning) it may be fine to release somewhat untested software (especially in case of Android apps that usually have good backwards compatibility). Otherwise you deliberately limit your audience that potentially can contribute to the development.

Anyway, that's only an opinion.

Thanks for your work.

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

@di72nn Thanks for updating and understanding ;-)

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

We will update the minSDK it causes many problems and app crashes on Android 4.x

di72nn commented 7 years ago

Do you have stacktraces? I may look into it.

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

@di72nn Just posted them in the Issues.

di72nn commented 7 years ago

I checked them out. None of them is related to minSdkVersion.

Yonjuni commented 7 years ago

Thanks for investigating, but this just means that none of the reported issues belongs to the mindSDK-change. But many users reported that the version without the change did not crash. So, I will continue looking for issue causing it.