Dealing with Google maps dependency

[pfalconMember]

That’s a project I personally looked forward to, glad it found itself: https://gitorious.org/android-maps-api . Because I already had to patch off Google Maps integration in an app in my staging.

Of related thought, one way to deal with spyware jars with which some FOSS links might be to create mock stubs for them. That would save on patching/forking the apps, but for sure is rather cunning plan…

[CiaranGMember]

Yep, I’ve been thinking the same thing recently. It’s not even necessary to go to the effort of building a stub jar file – just dump a class that implements the relevant non-functional methods in src/com/google/spyingonyou and the app/build process won’t know any different. More transparent that way too.

[daithib8Moderator]

Related: https://github.com/mar-v-in/NOGAPPS-MapsAPI

[daithib8Moderator]

Twidere has a clever way of avoiding the need to have Maps installed by showing the maps in a webview and requiring that the app be built against android target=Google Inc.:Google APIs:16 .

[daithib8Moderator]

We have about 10 apps in the repo that have the dependency. None of them can actually display Google Maps anyway because they don’t contain release keys in the source (Nobody complained for the longest time; I think because Google introduced API keys not so long ago). So they could all be improved by having the maps patched out in the way that OSMonitor has been.

[daithib8Moderator]

It’s can be as easy as adding uses-library android:name=”com.google.android.maps” android:required=”false” to the Manifest.
This method isn’t as good as pfalcons as the app will crash any time a maps screen is brought up and Google maps isn’t installed, but we can use it to remove the NonFreeDep anti-feature on about 10 apps. We just need to implement the ability to replace builds in the client without notifiying the user.

[alterechtschreibungMember]

pfalcons solution sounds most promising for me, since it avoids crashes. Third option: include https://github.com/mar-v-in/MapsAPI in the replacement jar to use OpenStreetMaps in the apps.

[daithib8Moderator]

I don’t think it would be possible to create a jar that replaces Google Maps with OSM, surely. As for NOGAPPS, if Replicant or other ROMs started using it I would contribute more Google Maps based apps to the repo, but to promote it at this stage would just add to the already considerable confusion over API keys and dependencies.

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