suggestion for new menu system

[Lanchon]

Feature description

given the burden of maintaining interactive install on many devices with issues such as #155 popping up routinely, maybe you could consider an alternative strategy: sorting out this can of worms once and for all.

(btw, i also suffered these issues in my zip creation days, and decided to go for a rename-zip-to-configure approach, which i think was a first; and was quickly obsoleted by the new adb sideload thingy :(... )

LineageOS recovery already has a modal way to pop up a menu with options during zip install/sideload (it is used when the signature of a package is not kosher). so it would be easy to add other modal menu prompts. my suggestion is that you could add an API to LOS recovery to present a modal menu. the API should log the question and chosen answer (or back/cancel). there should be a way to cleanly detect if the API is supported.

you would also do a "client library" that one can include in a zip to call that new feature; or else if it is not present, do a text/button poor man's fallback implementation based on your current menu system.

the fallback would look something like:

<QUESTION>

--> Back/Cancel 
    Opt 1
    Opt 2

Use VOL+/- and POWER to select.

each time you press VOL there would be a new reprint of the menu with the updated pointer.

next would be to have Lineage merge it... which can take a while. After that, TWRP would probably be easier.

one thing to investigate is whether TWRP already has something like this, and then replicate that API on LOS recovery if possible. (or maybe study why such porting was turned down when proposed to LOS, lol).

[ale5000-git]

This would be interesting, but I have a lot of things in my infinite ToDO list and modify the sources of LOS recovery wouldn't be fast as modify shell scripts.
Also I only have a Galaxy S2 with TWRP and Android emulators to test things.

But if someone else is willing to work on the sources of LOS recovery, then I can add support for it in the installer.

PS: If I remember correctly TWRP/CWM had something called Aroma to make choices in the GUI but I have never tried it and maybe it doesn't work on all devices.

[ale5000-git]

I have an idea to integrate into existing recovery code.
In the recovery to write a message you write ui_print... to recovery fd, maybe it can be expanded with other commands, like ui_question message + -

[ale5000-git]

Here it explain the know issues: https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Aroma-Package

[Lanchon]

I have an idea to integrate into existing recovery code. In the recovery to write a message you write ui_print... to recovery fd, maybe it can be expanded with other commands, like ui_question message + -

i think you need a blocking command that you can invoke and returns something. a regular command in the path (bin or script) returning either text or an error number would be ok.

if you need to talk to the running recovery process that indirectly invoked you (probably) you can talk over named pipes. you can have the command (a shell script) accept the arguments defining the menu, pass those over a pipe, wait for a selection over a pipe, and return the selection.

could be as simple as:

the_choice_command "title/question" "option 1" "option 2" ... "option n"

and the exit code would be 1 or 2 or N for options, or 0 if the user selected BACK/ESC. or you can return the option number via text with exit code 0, and maybe exit code 1 if user selected BACK/ESC. or you can even have the user specify the text returned:

the_choice_command "Select the DPI" "ldpi=Low (200 DPI)" "mdpi=Medium (300 DPI)" ... "xhdpi=Ultra-High (500+ DPI)"

with ldpi, etc being the values returned, and the user only seeing what is after the first equal signs as option descriptions.

the important thing is that the documented API is the well defined the_choice_command. how that command talks to recovery (eg named pipes) is an implementation detail subject to change.

[Lanchon]

btw for your next recovery project you can take a look at flashize, which is something that i made for repit years ago. just give it a regular bash script that uses echo, etc and it gives you a flashable zip. beats messing around with ui_print.

[Lanchon]

Also I only have a Galaxy S2 with TWRP and Android emulators to test things.

lol you still have those? i have bunch of old phones, and probably even a couple S2s.

[Lanchon]

If I remember correctly TWRP/CWM had something called Aroma to make choices in the GUI

i think it was a framework (abandoned) to provide UIs to zips but was completely independent of the recovery.

isn't TWRP dead? recovery is no longer independent of android. many vital partitions are shared between boot and recovery, such as the device tree binaries, so you mostly can't flash it. and TWRP doesn't even provide those, so you can't do a "fastboot boot twrp.img -dtc twrp-dtc.img ..."

[ale5000-git]

i think it was a framework (abandoned) to provide UIs to zips but was completely independent of the recovery.

It may be independent but it still require the recovery to be "compatible" with it.

isn't TWRP dead? recovery is no longer independent of android. many vital partitions are shared between boot and recovery, such as the device tree binaries, so you mostly can't flash it. and TWRP doesn't even provide those, so you can't do a "fastboot boot twrp.img -dtc twrp-dtc.img ..."

On Galaxy S2 a single TWRP recovery can span from Android 5 to Android 13 so this is the best.
LineageOS recovery is definitely inferior in features (also Toybox is inferior to BusyBox) but it has the advantage of being bundled with the ROM (excluding Galaxy S2).

[ale5000-git]

btw for your next recovery project you can take a look at flashize, which is something that i made for repit years ago. just give it a regular bash script that uses echo, etc and it gives you a flashable zip. beats messing around with ui_print.

I believe my zip has highest compatibility in the world; it also support ROMs that don't include printf and recoveries that don't setup /tmp.
Also it has a zip-install.sh script to allow to flash the zip via terminal or adb and it works whether the phone is in recovery or booted.

Currently it only install in the system partition but in the future it will also allow to install in system, system_ext or product partition and even in data partition as Magisk module.