[aerogear-dev] Android target and min SDK numbers

[Jay Balunas]

On Oct 26, 2012, at 10:10 AM, supittma at redhat.com wrote:

> Following a spirited discussion on the IRC channel we have come up with 
> the following arguments for and against several minimum versions of 
> Android which we will support for 1.0
> 
> android-7 Éclair
> For:
> The TODO app currently compiles and runs on it
> 
> Against:
> Older than cyber dirt.
> Relies on some deprecated HTTP Cient APIs
> More testing for not much more gain in market

There is no way we're targeting 1.0 - that is just crazy talk!!

> 
> android -8 Froyo
> For:
> We agreed on it before.
> Gains us 15% of Android Play users
> 
> Against:
> Still uses deprecated http libraries.
> Lose out on some of the nicer things in Gingerbread
> Can lower our minimum version in 1.0.1 if it passes QA
> Old as cyber dirt
> 

We did discuss this before, but also did not have the insight into the http stack differences/complications.

> android-10 Gingerbread
> For:
> Majority of Android users still use this
> Lots of good API's
> "Default" version for many Android developers
> Minimum version that the supported http libraries support
> 
> Against:
> We lose the users from Froyo
> We agreed on Froyo before
> The library doesn't strictly need it.

By far the largest market share, and for much of what/who we will be targeting having a min version of 2.3 (api 10) seems prudent at first sight.  That said supporting back to Froyo might be good if the technical costs are not too high.

> 
> My vote is for 10 with an eye to lower it to 8 shortly after 1.0 is 
> released.  This limits the number of platforms we have to test on to get 
> this out the door and doesn't affect our developers that much.

This seems like a very sensible approach for our first release!  We can target Froyo (depending on effort, or timing) after we 1.0 out.  Perhaps for a point or minor release.

+1

> _______________________________________________
> aerogear-dev mailing list
> aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org
> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/aerogear-dev