Allow Installation from Unknown Sources

Transcription

1 Part 5 - Publishing Independently It is possible to publish an application without using any of the existing Android marketplaces. This section will explain these other publishing methods and the licensing levels of Xamarin.Android. Xamarin Licensing Xamarin.Android has four different licenses that can be used for development, deployment, and distribution: Starter This free license is for a single developer who is the original user of the tool. It limits the size of the applications that can be built and restricts the use of external libraries or components. Indie This license is for a single developer who is the original user of the tool. It is intended for individuals and companies with fewer than five employees. The original user of the tool is the only one licensed to develop and distribute applications. Business This is a one-seat license for companies with more than five employees. Seat licensing allows the owner of the license to change the named user of the tool as required. Business licenses include support for development using Visual Studio and other business features. Enterprise This is a one-seat license for companies with more than five employees. Seat licensing allows the owner of the license to change the named user of the tool as required. Enterprise licenses include additional support options. Licenses allow for ad hoc deployment directly to fewer than 100 devices and deployment to an unlimited number of devices through a public app store such as Google Play or the Amazon App Store for Android. Only the Business and Enterprise licenses permits ad hoc deployment to more than 100 devices. Further information on licencing can be viewed here. Allow Installation from Unknown Sources By default, Android prevents users from downloading and installing applications from locations other than Google Play. To allow installation from non-marketplace sources, a user must enable the Unknown sources setting on a device before attempting to install an application. The setting for this may be found under Settings > Security, as shown in the following diagram:

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3 Note: Some network providers might prevent the installation of applications from unknown sources, regardless of this setting. Publishing by Attaching the release APK to an is a quick and easy way to distribute an application to users. When the user opens the on an Android-powered device, Android will recognize the APK attachment and display an Install button as shown in the following image:

4 Although distribution via is simple, it provides few protections against piracy or unauthorized distribution. It is best reserved for situations where the recipients of the application are few, and they are trusted not to distribute the application. Publishing by Web It is possible to distribute an application by a web server. This is accomplished by uploading the application to the web server, and then providing a download link to users. When an Android-powered device browses to a link and then downloads the application, that application will automatically be installed once the download is complete. Manually Installing an APK Manual installation is a third option for installing applications. To effect a manual installation of an application: 1. Distribute a copy of the APK to users. For example, this copy may be distributed on a CD or USB flash drive. 2. (The user) installs the application on an Android device. Use the command-line Android Debug Bridge ( adb ) tool. adb is a versatile command-line tool that enables communication with either an emulator instance or an Android-powered device. The Android SDK includes adb ; it can be found in the directory <sdk>/platform-tools/. The Android device must be connected with a USB cable to the computer. Windows computers might also require additional USB drivers from the phone vendor in order to be recognized by adb. Installation instructions for these additional USB drivers is beyond the scope of this document. Before issuing any adb commands, it is helpful to know which emulator instances or devices are connected, if any. It is possible to see a list of what is attached by using the devices command, as demonstrated in the following snippet: $ adb devices List of devices attached

5 0149B2EC device After the connected devices have been confirmed, the application can be installed by issuing the install command with adb: adb install <path-to-apk> The following snippet shows an example of installing an application to a connected device: $ adb install helloworld.apk 3772 KB/s ( bytes in 0.780s) pkg: /data/local/tmp/helloworld.apk Success If the application is already installed, the adb install will be unable to install the APK and will report a failure, as shown in the following example: $ adb install helloworld.apk 4037 KB/s ( bytes in 0.728s) pkg: /data/local/tmp/helloworld.apk Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_ALREADY_EXISTS] It will be necessary to uninstall the application from the device. First, issue the adb uninstall command: adb uninstall <package_name> The following snippet is an example of uninstalling an application: $ adb uninstall mono.samples.helloworld Success Part 6 - Publishing on the Amazon App Store