Internal attributes have unsuspected limitations

[jimdky]

I’ve tried to add a new attribute to the platform (by creating a
myattrs.xml in framework/base/core/res/res/values with the following
content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<declare-styleable name="MyStyleable">
<attr name="someAttributeName" format="reference" />
</declare-styleable>
</resources>

It is then possible to assign this attribute a value from a theme or
style with

<item name="android: someAttributeName ">@style/SomeStyle</item>

and then access this value from the component that needs to be able to
read the value.

But, what doesn't work is to set this attribute from inside e.g. a
view.

<SomeStandardComponent
android:someAttributeName="@something"

android: someAttributeName cannot be resolved.

It seems like the only way to use this internal attribute is as a
value to the name attribute. Is there a way to get access to it in any
other way (like the '*' to be able to refer to internal resources)?

Adding it to public.xml isn’t an option.