Instrumentation not available for applications (needed for challenge submission)

[Gergely Kis]

Hello,

I am trying to use the great instrumentation feature of Android, but I
have trouble executing the ApiDemos, because the PackageManager does
not grant the RUN_INSTRUMENTATION permission.
How can I generate an APK file that will be able to use the
RUN_INSTRUMENTATION permission?

Of course I am aware of the "am instrument" method, which makes it
possible to run an instrumentation directly.
However, this method is only good for running tests, not for using it
in real applications, and the ContactsFilterInstrumentation and
ContactsSelectInstrumentation examples fail to run with this method.

From my preliminary analysis it looks like that there might be an
undocumented tag in the AndroidManifest.xml that can be used to "sign"
the package so that the PackageManager grants this permission as well.

Yes, I know that this permission provides pretty deep system-level
access, but we would like to use this feature in a Challenge
Submission. I don't understand why this feature should be prohibited
in the challenge, even if only "signed" applications may use it on
real devices.

Am I missing something?

Best Regards,
Gergely