Re:Termux and Android 10
by adrianmonk on Monday May 18, 2020 @02:10PM
(#23226166)
Android apps ship with a file called AndroidManifest.xml that (among other things) tells the operating system the latest version of the API that the app understands, i.e. what the app was compiled and tested against. The operating system tries to maintain backward compatibility with what the app is expecting.
The Termux maintainers have built their app to tell the operating system that Termux is only aware of how the Android 9 API works. So when you run Termux on your Android 10 device, the operating system tries to behave like it's Android 9. So it allows this.
They (Google) do this to ease the transition so that when a new version of Android is released, they don't force all developers everywhere to immediately fix all compatibility issues.
But they do want developers to do it eventually, so at some point in the future, they will probably stop allowing the Termux maintainers to upload an app that declares "I don't understand Android 10 yet".
The Termux maintainers have built their app to tell the operating system that Termux is only aware of how the Android 9 API works. So when you run Termux on your Android 10 device, the operating system tries to behave like it's Android 9. So it allows this.
They (Google) do this to ease the transition so that when a new version of Android is released, they don't force all developers everywhere to immediately fix all compatibility issues.
But they do want developers to do it eventually, so at some point in the future, they will probably stop allowing the Termux maintainers to upload an app that declares "I don't understand Android 10 yet".