Replicant

TL;DR: it's a long way to the top..

After a first debugging overview, things seem harder than I thought.

Indeed, the Downloads app follows a much more complex scheme in retrieving network information, as opposed to other "regular" apps that simply ask for what kind of network is available.

Downloads app calls multiple functions in the framework, to retrieve various pieces of information about the network connection.
Most of that information is currently NOT available for the connection established via RepWifi.
The same goes with the "reverse tethering" connection. They happen to be kind-of "ghost connections".

I'm still trying to figure out WHERE and HOW the missing pieces of information are generated, stored, retrieved and reported to calling apps.

So, things will be harder and will take longer than expected.
But I'm still confident something can be done to mitigate this.

Ok, I made it.
I have a working proof of concept for RepWifi to correctly signal both "connection" and "disconnection" to the system.

I tested my work with the Download app, and it definitely works.
The final fix should also be beneficial to other apps that currently can't use the WiFi connection made by RepWifi.

The general concept is this:
by leveraging java reflection, RepWifi is instantiating its own "NetworkAgent", derived from

frameworks/base/core/java/android/net/NetworkAgent.java

it is registering its NetworkAgent to the system's connectivity framework, by calling

android.net.ConnectivityManager.registerNetworkAgent()

From that moment, RepWifi is able to pass "connectivity change" events to the system's ConnectivityService, just like the inner WiFi compoments would do.
All the rest is done by the default, built-in mechanisms: the connection is made available to regular apps through the canonical channels exposed by the frameworks, and, most importantly, it is entirely managed by the framework, including network access permissions and other stuff related to the Android security model.
Everybody is happy with that.

The last part remains to provide a painless way to switch RepWifi from being a regular app to a system app, and then back to regular when it needs to be updated through F-droid.
But this seems like an easy task to accomplish.

So, the issue is solved.
I just need some other time to clean up the code, and package the whole thing into RepWifi.
I will provide next version of RepWifi both on F-droid and on this very page.

Stay tuned.

Kurtis Hanna wrote:

How is the code that switches RepWifi from being a regular app to a system app coming along?

This one turned out to be pretty simple to implement:
every time RepWifi opens, it checks to be a system app. If it's not, it prompts the user for a confirmation.
If the user agrees, an automated script starts, makes the app a system one, and reboots the phone.
From that moment, it's also possible to update from F-droid without even removing RepWifi from being a system app (provided that it first was installed from F-droid).

As for the rest, I'm doing a massive restyle to the codebase, so next one will be a completely new version of RepWifi. As such, things are going a bit slowly, but I'm pretty confident I'll be able to release before June.
Please folks, keep patience for just a little more.. Next release is worth waiting, I promise!

Got my HDD fried last week.. :(
This means next release will take even longer than expected.
Sorry about that.

With considerable delay...
I'm happy to announce that this issue is solved inside RepWifi!

For the moment, there won't be no official release (no f-droid release), as this new version has a whole lot of new features that need to be tested for a while before getting to a stable release.

Nonetheless, I'm distributing an "unofficial" release, signed with my own GPG key, for users' convenience and to allow the community to test the new features.

The compiled APK is released in the original RepWifi forum thread
This new version is v0.9-beta
Please, make sure you verify the attached gpg signature.

The key fingerprint for the signature is:

2D36 719C A4B8 3C7A DD9D  33AE A02A 2F68 CD07 CEAD

As usual, source code is published here

Please, test this beta release, especially in combination with the Download app, and please report any bugs!

Happy Hacking!

Fil