ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Jamie Strandboge <jamie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 08/14/2013 08:50 AM, Jamie Strandboge wrote:
> On 08/14/2013 02:07 AM, Thomas Voß wrote:
>> Hey Fabio,
>>
>> no, applications are not allowed to run in background. Our application
>> lifecycle is strict in this respect and we only guarantee focused
>> applications to be running.
>>
> Well... I think saying applications are not allowed to do it is too strong-- the
> AppArmor profile doesn't enforce this because we have these rules:
> 
>   @{CLICK_DIR}/@{APPNAME}/@{APPVERSION}/**  mrklix,
>   owner @{HOME}/.local/share/@{APPNAME}/** mrwklix,
> 
> For those not familiar with apparmor, that means that an app is able to execute
> code that is in its install directory and its writable area, inheriting the
> policy of the parent. We did this because we don't know what app developers will
> want to do (eg, it might completely legitimate for an app author to write a
> helper program and execute it). To not put artificial limits on app authors, I
> believe this is the correct approach for application confinement.
> 
> Of course, this allows an app to create a daemon and run it. To me, running a
> daemon should be considered poor form and something that would be handled via
> app reviews ("when I install the app, my battery drains a lot faster-- this
> stinks!"). I think it would be better to say that application lifecycle does not
> (currently?) support running daemons in the background, and doing so may result
> in misbehavior.
> 
Right after I sent this, it occurred to me that application could possibly
support this-- user starts app, app starts background daemon, user moves to
different app, application lifecycle pauses the app and anything under its
process tree.

-- 
Jamie Strandboge                 http://www.ubuntu.com/

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature