1258452 - Add READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission to Fennec

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

sebastian reviewed this tiny patch in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1254353#c9.  That ticket is lagging so landing here.

Comment 1

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/91736cfdc9b0128cf40a779163d3fa244dcac933
Bug 1258452 - Pre: Assemble app and tests when collecting dependencies. r=me

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/a42ef90399bd6a848fb839647ea328e9453ffe5f
Bug 1258452 - Explicitly request READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. r=sebastian

Comment 2

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/91736cfdc9b0
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a42ef90399bd

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Is this going to result in a permissions bump for users?

Comment 4

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #3)
> Is this going to result in a permissions bump for users?

To the best of my knowledge, no.  READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is considered "dangerous", per Android: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission.html#READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE; but it's *implicitly* granted if you request WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, which we do.  This patch just *explicitly* asks for the permission, to work around a weirdness in the Android toolchain where the permission isn't always implicitly granted in the bouncer APK.

So we always have this permission (implicitly granted) in Fennec proper; this adds it to the bouncer.