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[app] [Think Tank] omnipatcher - patching apps the easy way

This thread is for discussion on how to implement omnipatcher for android.
Project site => http://android-omnipatcher.googlecode.com
Project owner is brut.all
An Android app that can automatically download and apply patches/fixes for installed apps. It makes possible to add features to closed source apps without distributing proprietary code.
Planned features (in more or less chronological order):
* apks patching
o res files adding, deleting, replacing - especially useful for themes designers
o applying smali patches
o bsdiff patching
o xml assets patching
o resources.arsc patching
* signing and zipaligning apks after patching
* automatic app version matching
* automatic downloading to SD card some dependencies like smali, baksmali, zipalign, etc.
* patching system apps
o with root permissions
o without root - by changing package name and installing it beside original app
* possibility to generate update.zip file to reinstall some critical apps
* online repository of users fixes
* tool that simplify or maybe fully automate generating of patches

[Reserved for future use]
[Reserved for future use]

Brut.all said:
I though Java has native zip support?
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Ok, Metamorph is run from console, so it hasn't got access to Java's zip lib. We wouldn't have this problem.

Brut.all said:
Big, but not huge And so far it was evolving very rapidly
Beside of that it will be iterating project. First we need patcher with some of basic features. Minimalistic UI and configuration, libs and patches will be downloaded manually to SD. Then we will add some automation, new features and so on.
Click to expand...
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Yes, I think an iterative project is the best for this
Brut.all said:
I did it already, this was really esay And file is significantly smaller, because smali/baksmali are built with Maven and hence have doubled deps.
I don't understand... You mean (bak)smaling only needed files? It is possible, I checked it
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I don't know how exactly baksmali work but I have some idea in mind that I have to check... will tell after reasearching some stuff ;-)
Brut.all said:
I though Java has native zip support?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, java has built in support (at least on desktop)

It's very interesting!

I made majority of work needed to release the first version of Omnipatcher with basic functionality and then I took to all Android stuff: UI, etc. 2 days passed and I'm almost at the starting point :-/ I got -10 to Android enthusiasm :-/

Android Layouting is not always that easy :-/
I don't have too much time now because I have to finish my pre bachelor thesis (have final design review on Wednesday) but...
How can I help with it?

Hey -- looking this over, as a non-developer/programmer; I am curious: is there any chance that this program could work to apply patches to *.img files? (Specifically, I'm thinking about hot-swapping the kernel.)

IConrad01 said:
Hey -- looking this over, as a non-developer/programmer; I am curious: is there any chance that this program could work to apply patches to *.img files? (Specifically, I'm thinking about hot-swapping the kernel.)
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Click to collapse
Nope, because the intent of this app is decompiling apk's, patch it and compiling again to make the patching app itself legal because no proprietary content will be distributed... the user has to provide the proprietary app to the patching util.
What you want to do could be easily done with just a binary patcher like bsdiff.

rac2030 said:
Android Layouting is not always that easy :-/
I don't have too much time now because I have to finish my pre bachelor thesis (have final design review on Wednesday) but...
How can I help with it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@brut.all If you want, we could open a wave for Brainstorming on the app and I can help you with the Android app stuff your having problems with?

I'm working on it alone because I write much faster in languages like Java, than in English ;-)
I want to get first basic (root only, sorry), but working version, clean up code, release it, update googlecode site a bit (TODOs in form of issues, some usage docs, etc.) and then I will open to community development. In a few days, I think

Nice, MetaMorph pretty much does alot of this, at least in regards to apk and jar patching. MetaMorph is in the market now. the only problem we have had so far is that market apps require them to be resigned when you edit their contents, so that is problematic.

Yep, someone told me about MetaMorph already, so I checked it out, cause I prefer team work than many parallel projects on the same topic.
However I concluded that MetaMorh has different assumptions: it was created as a theme designers tool mainly, so it emphasizes speed and simplicity.
I want to create all-in-one framework with many methods of patching (simple file replacement, bsdiff, smali, XML patching) and installation (in-place replacement, uninstall & install by package manager, generating update.zip), apk version control and possibility to distribute patches without containing proprietary stuff in them. And hence I have chosen Java in contrast to MetaMorph, which is a shell script.
And you have surprised me by info that MM is in the market. You wrote about MM app here, but you didn't write that you finished it... Is it just a front-end to shell script?

too bad this thread's dead

Compressed Resources (resources.arsc) Decompressor

First time poster, but long-time lurker and avid Android Developer here.
I'm putting the finishing touches on a tool that decompresses resource files (including the ARSC and any compressed XML files). It's something I sort of took interest in in my spare time, as a learning experience, and I think it would be helpful to the community. It could probably be used to make modifications to compressed layouts in a ROM, such as HTC Sense-based ROMs (decompress the resources, make edits, compress, sign...).
Anyways, I figured I'd ask first... does a tool like this already exist? If so, whatever, this was a learning experience anyways. If not, I'd like to get it out there for all of you geniuses to use.
I'd also like to know what kind of options might be good to have on this tool. Right now it's command-line-based (and might stay that way... I think a UI might be overkill). Let me know. I'll be watching!

That's great!
In which language is it written? Will you open-source it? If so, on which license?
I'm asking cause I need such tool for my Omnipatcher project and I intended to make it myself

Java. I'll probably open-source it once I clean it up enough. I mean, nothing's really a secret in there. I figured out everything I needed from the Android sources.
Brut.all said:
That's great!
In which language is it written? Will you open-source it? If so, on which license?
I'm asking cause I need such tool for my Omnipatcher project and I intended to make it myself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

When?
When will you relase this?

Oh, good work!!!
Any news?

itanczos said:
Oh, good work!!!
Any news?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry guys, I'm really eager to get this out, I'm just struggling to pay the bills, too. I hesitate to make promises, but it should be out sometime this month. I'm just as excited as you probably are to use it. I can't wait to see what kind of themes/mods sprout up once you all get your hands on this.

That sound cool, I was also thinking in creating such a tool or maybe just a shell script that uses aapt to get all the infos and generate an xml out of it but if you already have something in the pipe for doing this... I hope it's finished (or better said at a release stage) soon.

rac2030 said:
That sound cool, I was also thinking in creating such a tool or maybe just a shell script that uses aapt to get all the infos and generate an xml out of it but if you already have something in the pipe for doing this... I hope it's finished (or better said at a release stage) soon.
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Doesn't aapt only compile the resources, and not the other way around? I didn't think aapt gave us all the information we needed to go back to the original XML.

binarybulge said:
Doesn't aapt only compile the resources, and not the other way around? I didn't think aapt gave us all the information we needed to go back to the original XML.
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Click to collapse
It has dump command and output looks like full XML data just in different (easy to parse) format:
Code:
N: android=http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android
E: manifest (line=44)
A: android:sharedUserId(0x0101000b)="com.google.android.apps.maps" (Raw: "com.google.android.apps.maps")
A: android:versionCode(0x0101021b)=(type 0x10)0xcf6
A: android:versionName(0x0101021c)="3.3.1" (Raw: "3.3.1")
A: package="com.google.android.apps.maps" (Raw: "com.google.android.apps.maps")
E: uses-sdk (line=54)
A: android:minSdkVersion(0x0101020c)=(type 0x10)0x4
E: uses-permission (line=58)
A: android:name(0x01010003)="android.permission.CALL_PHONE" (Raw: "android.permission.CALL_PHONE")

binarybulge said:
Doesn't aapt only compile the resources, and not the other way around? I didn't think aapt gave us all the information we needed to go back to the original XML.
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Click to collapse
Code:
aapt dump xmltree xxx.apk AndroidManifest.xml
This does output some sort of xml like output... at least as far I have analyzed the output, it should be possible with some parsing code to recover or better said reconstruct a working xml ;-)
Of course, just implementing a complete encoder/decoder would be a nicer solution and as you said, theoretically all the needed framework stuff is on git so it wouldn't be hard to implement it if you have time... I though that this was what you have done or not?

rac2030 said:
Code:
aapt dump xmltree xxx.apk AndroidManifest.xml
This does output some sort of xml like output... at least as far I have analyzed the output, it should be possible with some parsing code to recover or better said reconstruct a working xml ;-)
Of course, just implementing a complete encoder/decoder would be a nicer solution and as you said, theoretically all the needed framework stuff is on git so it wouldn't be hard to implement it if you have time... I though that this was what you have done or not?
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Click to collapse
Haha, yeah it is what I have done. You guys just kind of worried me a little making me think I was reinventing the wheel.
aapt would have been one approach, but I'm still not sure it covers all bases. For example, the strings.xml, arrays.xml, etc files. Those obviously aren't handled the same as layout files. Their contents get compressed into the arsc file. I'm also handling some more complex cases, such as one package referencing drawables from another package.
My goal of course is to restore all input XML, including things like strings.xml, and all of those in various configuration-specific folders (orientation, locales, screen sizes...).

is there any public source of this Compressed Resources (resources.arsc) Decompressor?
i'd like to test it!

Hello Binarybulge!
News?

Is this dead or what?

I'm working on such tool on my own, have managed to decode XMLs (using Android source, not parsing aapt dumps) and now I know, what binarybulge was talking about:
binarybulge said:
aapt would have been one approach, but I'm still not sure it covers all bases. For example, the strings.xml, arrays.xml, etc files. Those obviously aren't handled the same as layout files. Their contents get compressed into the arsc file. I'm also handling some more complex cases, such as one package referencing drawables from another package.
My goal of course is to restore all input XML, including things like strings.xml, and all of those in various configuration-specific folders (orientation, locales, screen sizes...).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
binarybulge: please, let me know, whether you have quit, don't have time, died or what? Currently I'm working on decoding @ids and /res/values/ and I don't want to reinvent the wheel, if you have done this so far and just don't have time to continue your work.

I'm interested in pitching in. I want an easy tool for decoding a binary .xml file, edit it including adding new elements and then convert it back to binary xml.
I'm pretty familiar with Android low level stuff. One example of my work:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5475283
If I can help in any way, let me know. I don't want to reinvent the wheel either.

jonasl said:
I'm interested in pitching in. I want an easy tool for decoding a binary .xml file, edit it including adding new elements and then convert it back to binary xml.
I'm pretty familiar with Android low level stuff. One example of my work:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5475283
If I can help in any way, let me know. I don't want to reinvent the wheel either.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just for curiosity: how did you do it? Hex edited xml's and resources.arsc?
I'm still working on this tool and have made some progress

Everything that's been done on the keyboard linked above has been done in code. You of all people need no introduction to smail/baksmali
I've rewritten the configuration system (HTC's settings provider is missing in non sense roms), rewritten the parts that interfaces with google voice recognition service and some other tweaks, but it's all code mods.
To fix some remaining issues I must edit xml layouts. Just changing some color code etc. is doable in any hex editor, but adding and removing elements and attributes is kind of hard. I'm stuck at this point and was looking for a tool to convert own xml to binary xml. Since I didn't find such tool I was thinking about creating one and ran into this thread...

I've just successfully and fully automatically decoded all resources for simple HelloWorld apk, then edited them, packaged again using aapt and run on a device It's early alpha and is unusable for now cause it still doesn't support many types of resources, but I have a proof of concept, that it is possible to repackage resources

Brut.all said:
I've just successfully and fully automatically decoded all resources for simple HelloWorld apk, then edited them, packaged again using aapt and run on a device It's early alpha and is unusable for now cause it still doesn't support many types of resources, but I have a proof of concept, that it is possible to repackage resources
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yay! Cool! Waiting for release!
Greets!

[Q] Adding fonts to WP7 ?

Hello, (first post!)
Got an HTC HD7 a few days ago in India and loving it overall.
Noticed that some text (in either emails, webpages, facebook etc) which use "indic" or "devanagri" or "hindi" (India) font show up as square blocks suggesting missing fonts.
Is there a way to add/install fonts now or do we need to wait for updates from MS?
Also, is there a kind of official location for user feedback for such things? social.microsoft.com forums will do?
Thanks,
Vishal

fonts: no.
social.microsoft.com: yes.

The Gate Keeper said:
fonts: no.
social.microsoft.com: yes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow another incredible omission. Amazing how far backwards things have gone compared to Windows Mobile.

CSMR said:
Wow another incredible omission. Amazing how far backwards things have gone compared to Windows Mobile.
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Click to collapse
you're very quick to jump to conclusions... why would the end user need to install fonts? if it doesn't work in India yet it is because MS are still working on the language support. As they said already, asian countries (which include india if you know your geography) will get it mid to late 2011.

vishalrao said:
Is there a way to add/install fonts now or do we need to wait for updates from MS?
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Click to collapse
Developers can add any TrueType font (with Hindi or any other subsets) to their application (exactly as I did in UltiTran - will be available on market soon).
The simplest way to do this - it's an ExpressionBlend's FontManager.

The Gate Keeper said:
you're very quick to jump to conclusions... why would the end user need to install fonts? if it doesn't work in India yet it is because MS are still working on the language support. As they said already, asian countries (which include india if you know your geography) will get it mid to late 2011.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A constant refrain. Why would a user need x, where x is a standard feature of computing that has been in common use for decades.
If you know what a font is, you know why a user may want to install fonts. So that text in documents he views and composes can appear with those fonts.
The same goes for everything else. If you know what a file is, you know why a user may want to access files. If you know what multitasking is, you know why a user may want to have two tasks running simultaneously. And so on.
Sorry to go off on a tangent but this attitude is really dumbing down computing and may prevent the windows phone OS from ever being adequate.

of course i know what a font is. giving the end user ability to reach this sort of system wide tool though, they may as well just left us with windows mobile 6.5 rather than start from scratch.
in saying this, as i said before, MS are working on it for a uniform experience. otherwise you'll end up with some phones with some things and others without, which is what happened with windows mobile.
i'm not saying that we should dumb down the smart phones, but much of the general consumers don't really want to have to go to these lengths. that's not to say there aren't any, but if we were all like that, iPhone would definitely not have taken off.

Well, its mid past 2012, and do we have indic fonts on WP? Well, I guess they are not really bothered.

CSMR said:
A constant refrain. Why would a user need x, where x is a standard feature of computing that has been in common use for decades.
If you know what a font is, you know why a user may want to install fonts. So that text in documents he views and composes can appear with those fonts.
The same goes for everything else. If you know what a file is, you know why a user may want to access files. If you know what multitasking is, you know why a user may want to have two tasks running simultaneously. And so on.
Sorry to go off on a tangent but this attitude is really dumbing down computing and may prevent the windows phone OS from ever being adequate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 with you on this.
WP7 to current 8 is simplified to point of being useless. I have wm6.5 to WP8 devices & can't believe how hard it is to achieve the most basic functions even with fully unlocked custom ROMs on WP7.8.
Font should be simple so people can add required support for specific fonts for things from sms to docx. Only reason many users found it all too hard back on wm6.5 is fact most people had lower level PC knowledge back then & Microsoft didn't make things any easier & know just omit features completely !
Wm6.5.5 stays my daily device & work standard platform for my company.

[Q] Indian languages not rendering properly

I'm quite happy with my Nexus S. But there is one annoying problem with it. It cannot render Hindi or any other Indian language properly. All I got was boxes instead of letters. So I installed a custom font[DroidSansFallback.ttf] which had all the required alphabets.
Even after this the rendering of text is not proper. Its like its missing some rendering rules -
It should be like this instead -
Now Gingerbread was supposed to support Hindi atleast. I am disappointed a lot. Has anyone has found a workaround or fix?
I know there is a way because a mid range handset like Samsung Galaxy Pro supports it out of box.
PS: Pardon my n00bness. This is my first thread.

Indic language rendering is not enabled on Android by default.
Please see page 2 of this thread:- (and help, if you can)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1062899

Thanks a lot for guiding me there.

Vietnamese encode method (telex)

Dear devs,
The stock keyboard says it supports Vietnamese, but the encoding method is strange to Vietnamese users, and we can't use it and thus a third party keyboard is needed.
Would any developers be kind enough to merge telex encoding method to the keyboard? It would be great help.
I found this on github but it reads alien to mere mortals like I am.
https://github.com/typester/emacs/blob/master/lisp/language/vietnamese.el
Please help.
Sent from my Nexus 4

nqk said:
Dear devs,
The stock keyboard says it supports Vietnamese, but the encoding method is strange to Vietnamese users, and we can't use it and thus a third party keyboard is needed.
Would any developers be kind enough to merge telex encoding method to the keyboard? It would be great help.
I found this on github but it reads alien to mere mortals like I am.
https://github.com/typester/emacs/blob/master/lisp/language/vietnamese.el
Please help.
Sent from my Nexus 4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately there's really nothing we can do here, unless there is someone who does understand what this encoding issue is, and knows what it should look like, and how to do that.
That links is for emacs, but really this looks like an entire new characterset, which means we'd need someone who understands this characterset, and can write the initial code for the feature.

pulser_g2 said:
Unfortunately there's really nothing we can do here, unless there is someone who does understand what this encoding issue is, and knows what it should look like, and how to do that.
That links is for emacs, but really this looks like an entire new characterset, which means we'd need someone who understands this characterset, and can write the initial code for the feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your concern.
I understand that this issue should have been fixed by a Vietnamese developer. What a shame that I don't have their contacts.
However, I think if I had said "input method", it would have explained the situation better. I don't think there is a need for a new charset, it's still unicode, the same thing that is used by Android (Roboto font family supports it quite well).
================
I don't know how difficult it may be, but let me explain how it should works when inputting Vietnamese using Telex (we call it) method.
Vietnamese char table include these characters (in addition to English alphabets): â, ă, ê, ô, ơ, ư, and they are combined with accent charracters: ´ (acute), ` (grave), ˜ (tilde), ̉ (hook above), and ̣ (dot below)
Normally, we use the English keyboard, which contains no such characters, so we type:
aa ==> â, aw ==> ă, ee ==> ê, oo ==> ô, ow ==> ơ, uw ==> ư ( or [ ==> ơ, ] ==> ư ), uo ==> ươ
To combine vowels with accents we use s ==> accute, f ==> grave, x ==> tilde, r ==> hook above, and j ==> dot below
==============
Examples:
tooi ==> tôi
toois ==> tối
thor ==> thỏ
hoaf ==> hòa
=================
I know this may be impossible for non-Vietnamese developer, but I still hope for a solution.
=============
This is anothe link to a linux Vietnamese keyboard, which is OpenSource. It is in fact the most popular keyboard software in Vietnam.
http://unikey.org/source.php
http://sourceforge.net/projects/uni...unikey-1.0.4.tar.bz2/download?use_mirror=nchc

An opensource Android keyboard app would be MUCH more useful as a reference.
Otherwise I'm not sure if there's much chance of this getting done properly without a Vietnamese developer who can properly test things as they work.
(similar to why EAP-SIM support still isn't in any custom firmware - only a small subset of developers can even work on EAP-SIM since only a few carriers support it.)

Entropy512 said:
An opensource Android keyboard app would be MUCH more useful as a reference.
Otherwise I'm not sure if there's much chance of this getting done properly without a Vietnamese developer who can properly test things as they work.
(similar to why EAP-SIM support still isn't in any custom firmware - only a small subset of developers can even work on EAP-SIM since only a few carriers support it.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dear @Entropy512,
I found this https://github.com/AgeOfMobile/Vietnamese-LatinIME
Is it good (enough)?