> Well, as soon as we allow something like that, we can't allow
> forward-locked apps on the SD card, and those are likely to be the
> largest ones, i.e. the ones that'd benefit most from being installed
> there. Maybe that could be worked around by keeping the "protected"
> parts of the app on internal storage, and putting the rest on the SD
> card. I'm not sure that users would understand why only some of their
> apps can be shared between devices.

> This opens a lot of other cans of worms: e.g. this'll create
> situations where the same app is installed on the internal storage and
> on the SD card. This doesn't directly allow to guarantee overall
> uniqueness of UIDs on a given device. This creates some nasty issues
> of compatibility if developers start to fine-tune individual versions
> of their app for individual devices and an SD card is shared between
> non-identical devices. This would also require to re-validate all the
> permissions of all the SD-card apps whenever that SD-card is mounted
> on a device (including at each boot). In general, this would create a
> truckload of security issues, since no device can't trust the content
> of the SD card.

> Like I said, this is something that we should really really really not
> try to do in a first version - it'd doom the feature to being so hard
> to implement and to have so many subtle issues that I guarantee it'd
> delay it much further. Enough users have been vocal enough about this
> that I strongly feel that we should aim for something simple that's
> more likely to be feasible (because "simple" is already going to be
> hard enough).

> JBQ

> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:56 PM, Al Sutton <a...@funkyandroid.com> wrote:

> > I've never been a fan of assuming how a user uses their device and not
> > including functionality on that basis.

> > Personally I can see people temporarily swapping SD cards so they can
> > try out other peoples apps on their phone, so I can see the need to
> > handle it properly.

> > Al.
> > --

> > * Looking for Android Apps? - Tryhttp://andappstore.com/*

> > ======
> > Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the
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> > The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not
> > necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's
> > subsidiaries.

> > On 23 Oct 2009, at 01:05, Eric F wrote:

> >>  you buy a Mac Mini you get to
> >> choose how big of a disk drive you want. I can't really imagine a
> >> situation where I'd want to have different apps on different SD cards
> >> and switch between them. Sure in a perfect world it should still work.
> >> But if it degrades from the system being able to work smoothly in
> >> other areas, I don't think this is a bad thing to give up. Especially
> >> if it's possible to A) take the file that represents the encrypted
> >> file system and copy it to the computer, and then copy it to a second
> >> card. So let's say we bought an 8GB card thinking that would be
> >> sufficient. Later we realize we wanted a 16 GB card, we move the file
> >> between cards using a computer and then use Android to resize the
> >> filesystem to our new choice, preserving our installed apps.

> >> I can't see normal users "swapping cards", so that leaves us with
> >> power users. I think most power users are hungry for the largest/
> >> fastest SD card they can get their hands on. Which means 16 (soon 32)
> >> GB cards, how many of those is a user going to need? Many phones are

> --
> Jean-Baptiste M. "JBQ" Queru
> Software Engineer, Android Open-Source Project, Google.

> Questions sent directly to me that have no reason for being private
> will likely get ignored or forwarded to a public forum with no further
> warning.