Hi Mark

Good morning

hello, Tiru!

How are you?

OK, and yourself?

Great. I was planning to talk to for a while. At last, time permitted me to join this chat

how can I help you today?

We are having trouble with alarms when people remove our app from their recents list on devices such as Xiomi, Vivo, Oppo, etc.

Alarms are getting triggered fine on Google, LG, Samsung, etc.

there are two possible causes that I have theorized for this:

1. Some manufacturers have elected to treat this act as "force stop" rather than "kill background process", and "force stop" cancels alarms

2. They might just be cancelling alarms along with killing the process

They are stopping the process

well, that happens on all devices

stopping the process does not cancel alarms, though

Sadly, the app is not even receiving the GCM push notifications

that suggests my "force stop" scenario

as I think that would also interrupt GCM messages

it's certainly more than just cancelling alarms, as that should not affect GCM/FCM

if you have a device (or two) at the office that can reproduce the problem, go into Settings after swiping away your task, and see if the Force Stop button is grayed out

if it is, you were already force-stopped by swiping away the task

yes... it was grayed out

let me check it gaain

then that's what's happening

if you are somehow in position to have two separate apps, you could use a second app as a "watchdog", using an explicit Intent to talk to the first (force-stopped) app, which should move it out of the force-stopped state

however, most developers are not in position to have two separate apps

and in that case, there isn't a lot that you can do about it that I know of, other than to yell at the manufacturer

I am fine with two apps, but what would happen if user force stops both of them

Are you suggesting that 2nd app shouldn't have any UI activities?

well, it will need something in the UI, otherwise it will never run

however, it would not be an app that the user normally uses

you would use JobScheduler/AlarmManager/GCM/etc. to have the 2nd app run occasionally and kick the 1st app via an explicit Intetn

er, Intent

basically, the goal is for the 2nd app to rarely have a task that the user might clear and have *it* get force-stopped

you could have the two apps each kick the other, in hopes that all the time at least one of the apps is not force-stopped

this, of course, is aggravating

can the 2nd app have a service that the 1st app launches?

sure, why not?

that way 2nd app will not have any UI activity

or, use a BroadcastReceiver, sending an explicit Intent as a broadcast

ah, I see

and user will never need to launch the 2nd app directly

yes, that should work -- it's an extension of my "have each app kick the other" approach

great

the key is the explicit Intent

if your app is started via an explicit Intent, you are moved out of the force-stopped state

for most apps, that comes when the user taps on a home screen launcher icon

ok

thanks for your time

you are very welcome!

how is your business/hobby

are you still a one man army?

:: looks around ::

yes, I am still a one-man army

unless you count dust bunnies

who, frankly, really suck at typing

:-)

good

that way you're always in full control

well, until the dust bunnies stage a coup

:-)

BTW, I'm surprised you didn't cover anything about Mobile Device Management (MDM)

I have a chapter on device administration, though it needs updating

Talk to you later. Have fun!

thanks! you too!

wait a minute... one last question... what tools do you use for writing the book?

docbook, htmlbook, markdown, any such thing?

MultiMarkdown, PrinceXML, and some Ruby scripts, mostly

never heard of princexml... will look it up

it converts HTML/XML to PDF

commercial tool

ok.. i have used Apache FOP in the past

I used to write DocBook and generate an OpenOffice/LibreOffice ODT file, then get a PDF from there

what made you switch to MMD?

btw, did you go to Google IO this year?

DocBook was kinda a pain, the DocBook->ODT conversion process had issues, and I couldn't automate as much

no, I have not been to I|O in a few years

for the presentations, the videos are better than being there live, IMHO

ok.. have you presented at any conferences lately?

DevFest DC a few weeks ago

AnDevCon DC is coming up in July

ok... as I am in India, YouTube or the IO site is the only sensible option at the moment

BTW, If I may ask, how many active subscribers does the book have?

right now, about 1400

great Mark!

proud of you

as always, it's very nice talking to you

talk to you later... bye

likewise!