Definition of DEVELOPER_MODE for StrictMode

Question

I'm anxiously awaiting the open source release of StrictMode for continuation of our platform development. The sample in the Android blog entry suggests surrounding the StrictMode calls with

if (DEVELOPER_MODE) {
    ...
}

For SDK development, I'd expect this constant to be locally defined by each application. However, for platform development, is android.util.Config.DEBUG the best way to determine whether to turn this on?

Answer 1

It's an old question, but I'd like to mention that the closest alternative I can imagine is BuildConfig.DEBUG for application engineers. It returns whether this is a debug build.

Answer 2

Sorry, DEVELOPER_MODE was just an arbitrary name I picked for the blog post and Javadoc. Perhaps I should make that more clear in the docs.

I'd imagined people would make their own hard-coded,

private static final boolean DEVELOPER_MODE = false;

... that they maintain by hand, but looks like Config.DEBUG would have been a better thing to use. I didn't even know about that! :)

Answer 3

Config.DEBUG is not going to actually works since it is pretty much always set to false. It is better to look at the debuggable attribute in the AndroidManifest file . I have documented it on a blog post. Links are with this answer

Answer 4

To Answer my own question... As a platform developer (one using Android to create a device), the Activity Manager in Android automatically enables StrictMode on the main thread for all apps installed on the System Partition whenever the platform is built with an eng or userdebug built. I agree with Manfred that Config.DEBUG is not appropriate for SDK developers. Essentially, platform developers writing applications which are loaded by default on the System Partition don't have to do anything to take advantage of StrictMode - the platform does it for them.