ACCESS_SURFACE_FLINGER and READ_FRAME_BUFFER

[rukiman]

I noticed that these permissions exists in the AndroidManifest.xml
file.

READ_FRAME_BUFFER
ACCESS_SURFACE_FLINGER

are developers allowed to directly access the framebuffer and surface
flinger from within their apps?

What type of apps would do this and why?

Would I be right in saying at the moment ONLY the WindowManager uses
these features?

I also noticed the interfaces to these features is C++ code. So can I
safely assume that ONLY platform developers can make use of these
features and NOT application developers?

Can someone also briefly summarize what an app would/could do with
these features?

[Christopher Tate]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 5:09 PM, rukiman<ruks...@optushome.com.au> wrote:
>
> I noticed that these permissions exists in the AndroidManifest.xml
> file.
>
> READ_FRAME_BUFFER
> ACCESS_SURFACE_FLINGER
>
> are developers allowed to directly access the framebuffer and surface
> flinger from within their apps?

Look at frameworks/base/core/res/AndroidManifest.xml to see what
access rights apply to each of the system-defined permissions. In
this case, you'll see that both READ_FRAME_BUFFER and
ACCESS_SURFACE_FLINGER are marked as
android:protectionLevel="signature".

When a permission is signature-only, only code built directly into the
platform can use it. Third party applications cannot use these
permissions.

--
chris tate
android framework engineer

[happydroid]

It would be really cool to allow third party apps to request those
permissions, along with the SDK APIs that would use them. It would
then be possible to develop remote control applications without native
development and without rooting the device !

Is something planned for the future releases ?

[Adrian Taylor]

Hi,

See
http://groups.google.com/group/android-platform/browse_thread/thread/28399bc4c6779458/845833bc442d7ad4?q=READ_FRAME_BUFFER

Regards

Adrian