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Fortunately the source code is available: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/refs/heads/master/tools/aapt2/ https://android.googlesour

Fortunately the source code is available: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/refs/heads/master/tools/aapt2/ https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/... If I had the time, I'd try to compile a binary of it that will run on Win95 just to give my fuckings to the planned obsolescence crowd.

maxloh 1y ago
There is no point for Google to push planned obsolescence on the PC or server space. They don't have a market there.
- userbinator 1y ago
  It does benefit them to make it harder for competitors.
  - maxloh 1y ago
    When you mention "competitors," what industries or markets are you referring to? No one would write Android apps on a Chromebook, and making it harder to do so would only reduce the incentive for companies to develop Android apps. How could Google benefit from pushing a newer instruction set standard on Windows and macOS?
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      The one moderately popular competitor is the project in the OP that is suffering directly from this upstream change.
      - maxloh 1y ago
        While your perspective makes some sense, it's highly improbable. It's unlikely that Google was aware of F-Droid's infrastructure specs, or its inability to fix the issue in advance. It seems you're suggesting a very specific, targeted attack.
        fsflover 1y ago
        > It seems you're suggesting a very specific, targeted attack. Yes, just like it happened with Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926156
        pkasting 1y ago
        Former Chrome team member here. Nightingale's suspicions were plausible but incorrect. The primary cause of every one of these we looked into over the years (and there were indeed many) was teams not bothering to test against Firefox because its market share was low compared to the cost of testing for it. In many cases teams tried to reduce support burden by simply marking "unsupported" any browser they didn't explicitly test, which was sometimes just Chrome and Safari. We were distressed at this and wrote internal guidance around not doing things like the above, and tried to distribute it and point back to it frequently. Unfortunately Firefox' share continued to go down, engineering teams continued to be resource-constrained, and the problem continued to occur. Several years ago I glumly opined internally that Firefox had two grim choices: abandon Gecko for Chromium, or give up any hope of being a meaningful player in the market. I am well aware that many folks (especially here) would consider the first of those choices worse than the second. It's moot now, because they chose the second, and Firefox has indeed ceased to be meaningful in the market. They may cease to exist entirely in the next five years. I am genuinely unhappy about this. I was hired at Google specifically to work on Firefox. I was always, and still remain, a fan of Firefox. But all things pass. Chrome too will cease to exist some day.
        fsflover 1y ago
        Thank you for the interesting insight. This is more or less what I expected. > suspicions were plausible but incorrect The suspicions were not about the evil will of the engineers. It's the will of Google itself (or managers, if you want), which plays the main role here. This is exactly what causes the following: > engineering teams continued to be resource-constrained It reminds me a bit of Boeing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19914838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19914838
      - jeroenhd 1y ago
        I doubt Google even cares about F-Droid. The Play Store competes with the iOS App Store, Huawei's App Galery, and probably the Samsung Store long before F-Droid becomes relevant. If they required a Google-specific Linux distro to build this thing or if they went the Apple route and added closed-source components to the build system, this could be seen as a move to mess with the competition, but this is simply a developer assuming that most people compiling apps have a CPU that was produced less than 15 years ago (and that the rest can just recompile the toolchain themselves if they like running old hardware). With Red Hat and Oracle moving to SSE4.1 by default, the F-Droid people will run into more and more issues if they don't upgrade their old hardware.
      - ohdeargodno 1y ago
        F-Droid is so insignificantly small their entire userbase is smaller than the amount of users of each app in the top 500 of every single large store (Play, Galaxy, Huawei, etc.) This happened because nobody gives a shit about F-Droid, not because it's somehow a "threat" with unmaintained apps.
tonyhart7 1y ago
"If I had the time, I'd try to compile a binary of it that will run on Win95 just to give my fuckings to the planned obsolescence crowd" The idea that not supporting a 20+ year old system is "planned obsolescence" is a bit shallow
WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
But you don't, so you won't, scoring one for the planned obsolescence crowd. And so won't anyone else who has time to complain about planned obsolescence, and that includes myself.
msgodel 1y ago
The Win95 API is pretty incomplete. That was actually a terrible OS. The oldest I'd go playing this game with anything serious is probably XP.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  It can read files, write files, and allocate memory. Is there anything else you need to compile software?
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Can it? Files on Windows 95 and files on most Unix-like OSes are very different things.
    - userbinator 1y ago
      They're the same from the perspective of a stream of persistent bytes. If you want "very different" then look at the record-based filesystems used in mainframes.
      - CodesInChaos 1y ago
        Do you have any recommended reading about record-based filesystems?
jve 1y ago
Like it is a one-off thing to support some system. You must maintain it and account it for all the features you bring in going forward.

maxloh 1y ago

There is no point for Google to push planned obsolescence on the PC or server space. They don't have a market there.

userbinator 1y ago
It does benefit them to make it harder for competitors.
- maxloh 1y ago
  When you mention "competitors," what industries or markets are you referring to? No one would write Android apps on a Chromebook, and making it harder to do so would only reduce the incentive for companies to develop Android apps. How could Google benefit from pushing a newer instruction set standard on Windows and macOS?
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    The one moderately popular competitor is the project in the OP that is suffering directly from this upstream change.
    - maxloh 1y ago
      While your perspective makes some sense, it's highly improbable. It's unlikely that Google was aware of F-Droid's infrastructure specs, or its inability to fix the issue in advance. It seems you're suggesting a very specific, targeted attack.
      - fsflover 1y ago
        > It seems you're suggesting a very specific, targeted attack. Yes, just like it happened with Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926156
        pkasting 1y ago
        Former Chrome team member here. Nightingale's suspicions were plausible but incorrect. The primary cause of every one of these we looked into over the years (and there were indeed many) was teams not bothering to test against Firefox because its market share was low compared to the cost of testing for it. In many cases teams tried to reduce support burden by simply marking "unsupported" any browser they didn't explicitly test, which was sometimes just Chrome and Safari. We were distressed at this and wrote internal guidance around not doing things like the above, and tried to distribute it and point back to it frequently. Unfortunately Firefox' share continued to go down, engineering teams continued to be resource-constrained, and the problem continued to occur. Several years ago I glumly opined internally that Firefox had two grim choices: abandon Gecko for Chromium, or give up any hope of being a meaningful player in the market. I am well aware that many folks (especially here) would consider the first of those choices worse than the second. It's moot now, because they chose the second, and Firefox has indeed ceased to be meaningful in the market. They may cease to exist entirely in the next five years. I am genuinely unhappy about this. I was hired at Google specifically to work on Firefox. I was always, and still remain, a fan of Firefox. But all things pass. Chrome too will cease to exist some day.
        fsflover 1y ago
        Thank you for the interesting insight. This is more or less what I expected. > suspicions were plausible but incorrect The suspicions were not about the evil will of the engineers. It's the will of Google itself (or managers, if you want), which plays the main role here. This is exactly what causes the following: > engineering teams continued to be resource-constrained It reminds me a bit of Boeing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19914838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19914838
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      I doubt Google even cares about F-Droid. The Play Store competes with the iOS App Store, Huawei's App Galery, and probably the Samsung Store long before F-Droid becomes relevant. If they required a Google-specific Linux distro to build this thing or if they went the Apple route and added closed-source components to the build system, this could be seen as a move to mess with the competition, but this is simply a developer assuming that most people compiling apps have a CPU that was produced less than 15 years ago (and that the rest can just recompile the toolchain themselves if they like running old hardware). With Red Hat and Oracle moving to SSE4.1 by default, the F-Droid people will run into more and more issues if they don't upgrade their old hardware.
    - ohdeargodno 1y ago
      F-Droid is so insignificantly small their entire userbase is smaller than the amount of users of each app in the top 500 of every single large store (Play, Galaxy, Huawei, etc.) This happened because nobody gives a shit about F-Droid, not because it's somehow a "threat" with unmaintained apps.

tonyhart7 1y ago

"If I had the time, I'd try to compile a binary of it that will run on Win95 just to give my fuckings to the planned obsolescence crowd" The idea that not supporting a 20+ year old system is "planned obsolescence" is a bit shallow

WesolyKubeczek 1y ago

But you don't, so you won't, scoring one for the planned obsolescence crowd. And so won't anyone else who has time to complain about planned obsolescence, and that includes myself.

msgodel 1y ago

The Win95 API is pretty incomplete. That was actually a terrible OS. The oldest I'd go playing this game with anything serious is probably XP.

jeroenhd 1y ago
It can read files, write files, and allocate memory. Is there anything else you need to compile software?
- msgodel 1y ago
  Can it? Files on Windows 95 and files on most Unix-like OSes are very different things.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    They're the same from the perspective of a stream of persistent bytes. If you want "very different" then look at the record-based filesystems used in mainframes.
    - CodesInChaos 1y ago
      Do you have any recommended reading about record-based filesystems?

jve 1y ago

Like it is a one-off thing to support some system. You must maintain it and account it for all the features you bring in going forward.