feat(dev): an Android failure looks exactly like a success
The APK installs and launches. It also dies six milliseconds later, and finding that out cost a cycle for three reasons that have nothing to do with the bug itself: **Go's stdout does not reach logcat.** An Android app's fd 1 and 2 go to /dev/null, so every slog line -- including the one naming the error the app is about to exit on -- is discarded. `setprop log.redirect-stdio true` does not help: that redirects the Java runtime's System.out, and our code is a c-shared native library. **os.Exit leaves no evidence.** No panic, no AndroidRuntime stack, nothing in /data/tombstones, nothing in `logcat -b crash` or dropbox. All three places anyone would look are empty, and the one signal that is present -- "Zygote: exited due to signal 9" -- reads as "the system killed it" and sends you after the low-memory killer. **ActivityManager restarts it faster than you can observe.** pidof always answers and `am start` always reports Status: ok, so a crash-looping app looks alive. "Did it start" is the wrong question; `make android-smoke` asks whether it is the *same pid* N seconds later, and prints the filtered logcat plus how to read it when it is not. The tell, once known: "I/WailsBridge: Wails bridge initialized" followed immediately by a new pid doing the same thing. scripts/android-emulator.sh follows dev-headless.sh's shape -- background start, saved-PID stop, filtered log tail, never pkill -f. Two scaffold tasks are deliberately not wrapped: `android:logs` greps logcat for (Wails|yellowjacket), which catches the WailsBridge tag but misses the app's own process tag (app.yellowjacket is lowercase) and misses ActivityManager's "has died" line, which is the one that says it crashed; and `ensure-emulator` boots whatever `-list-avds | tail -1` returns, with no pidfile and no boot wait, so it cannot be sequenced. One environment note that is not obvious on Arch: Gradle needs a platform and /opt/android-sdk has none, so ANDROID_SDK defaults to ~/Android/Sdk while ANDROID_NDK points at /opt/android-ndk. Two SDKs, one for each half of the build.
This commit is contained in:
@@ -151,6 +151,7 @@ only climb when it cannot.
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| Something you cannot predict — exploring | `make dev-headless SEED=default` + `playwright-cli` | interactive |
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| Something whose answer is a *number*, not a pass | `make perf` against a bulk-seeded app | ~1 min + setup |
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| A `.sql` or `.templ` file | `make generate`, then the checklist in [references/schema-change.md](references/schema-change.md) | |
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| Anything that has to survive on a phone | `make android-smoke` against a booted emulator | ~1 min + setup |
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Two targets are once-per-clone prerequisites that are **not**
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dependencies of the targets needing them, so on a fresh checkout each
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@@ -426,3 +427,9 @@ fails the build otherwise, including in files no lint pass compiles.
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and what breaks in it.
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- [schema-change.md](references/schema-change.md) — the two-file
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schema/migration checklist.
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- [android-tier.md](references/android-tier.md) — the emulator tier,
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and the three reasons a failure there looks like a success. **Read
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its first section before running anything on Android**: Go's stdout
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does not reach logcat, `os.Exit` leaves no panic and no tombstone,
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and ActivityManager restarts a dying app fast enough that `pidof`
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always answers.
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@@ -0,0 +1,169 @@
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# The Android tier
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A sixth tier, and the only one where **the app failing looks exactly
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like the app working**. Read the first section before you run anything;
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it is the difference between a diagnosis and an afternoon.
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This tier answers "does the phone build run", nothing else. It is not a
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spec tier, it does not run in CI, and the app is not a usable Android
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player yet (plan 015 says why, at length).
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## Three facts that make failure invisible
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**Go's stdout does not reach logcat.** An Android app's fd 1 and 2 go to
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`/dev/null`. Every `slog` line the app writes is discarded — including
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the one naming the error it is about to exit on. `setprop
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log.redirect-stdio true` does not help: it redirects the *Java*
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runtime's `System.out`, and the Go code is a c-shared native library.
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**`os.Exit` is a silent death.** `main()` ends several failure paths in
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`os.Exit(1)`. From Android's side that is a process that vanished:
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`ActivityManager: Process com.wails.app has died`, `Zygote: exited due
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to signal 9`, and **no** panic, **no** `AndroidRuntime` stack, **no**
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tombstone under `/data/tombstones` and nothing in `logcat -b crash` or
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dropbox. All three of the places you would look are empty, and the one
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signal that is present — SIGKILL — reads as "the system killed it",
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which is the wrong hypothesis.
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**ActivityManager restarts it, so a dead app looks alive.** A
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crash-looping app is respawned several times a second, so `pidof` always
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answers and `am start` always reports `Status: ok`. "Did it start" is
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the wrong question. `make android-smoke` asks the right one — is it the
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*same pid* a few seconds later.
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The tell, once you know it: `I/WailsBridge: Wails bridge initialized`
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followed immediately by a new pid doing the same thing. That means the
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native library loaded, the JNI bridge came up, Go's `main()` ran, and
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`main()` left. Work backwards through its `os.Exit(1)` paths.
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## What to run
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One-time, ~3.5 GB:
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```bash
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make android-setup # SDK pieces + the yj-test AVD, idempotent
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```
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Then:
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```bash
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make android # fat APK (arm64 + x86_64) -> bin/yellowjacket.apk
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make android-emulator # boot headless in the background, wait for boot
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make android-install # adb install -r
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make android-smoke # launch, then assert the same pid survives 10s
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make android-logs # filtered logcat, follow
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make android-emulator-stop # console kill, then the saved PID
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```
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`make android-smoke SECONDS=30` for a longer window. On failure it
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prints the last 40 app-relevant logcat lines and how to read them.
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Never `pkill -f emulator` — the pattern matches the invoking shell's own
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command line and kills it, silently dropping the rest of your compound
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command. The emulator is addressed by its saved pid in
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`.dev/emulator.pid`, same discipline as `make dev-stop`.
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## Things that cost a cycle
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- **`ANDROID_HOME` must carry a platform, and Arch's does not.**
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`/opt/android-sdk` (the `android-sdk` package) has an NDK and
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build-tools but `platforms/` is *empty*, so Gradle fails with a
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compileSdk error that reads like a version mismatch. The Makefile
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defaults `ANDROID_SDK` to `~/Android/Sdk` (user-owned, writable,
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where sdkmanager puts things) and `ANDROID_NDK` to `/opt/android-ndk`
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separately, because the Go half wants the NDK and the Gradle half
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wants the platform and they are in different places.
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- **The NDK is pinned to r26d** (`26.3.11579264`, Arch's
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`android-ndk-26`). Newer NDKs have broken the Wails Android build
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before. CI pins the same one.
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- **Without KVM the emulator still works and is unusably slow** — a 30 s
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boot becomes tens of minutes, which reads as a hung target rather than
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a slow one. `make android-setup` checks and warns.
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- **`-no-snapshot` is deliberate.** A snapshot-resumed emulator carries
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the previous run's app state, and a smoke result that depends on what
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the last run left behind is not a result.
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- **The logcat filter is not optional.** The emulator emits thousands of
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lines a second, nearly all WindowManager transitions; an unfiltered
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`adb logcat` buries the six lines that matter. `make android-logs`
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filters to `WailsBridge`, the app's own tag, `GoLog`, `AndroidRuntime`,
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`DEBUG` and `libc:F`.
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- **`run-as` does not work on a release-signed APK** (`package not
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debuggable`), so you cannot read the app's data directory or its
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environment that way. Ask the device instead, or build a debug variant.
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- **The `google_apis` system image, not `default`.** This app is a
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WebView app; `google_apis` ships the Chrome-based WebView that
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actually renders it.
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## The current state of the build
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`make android-smoke` **fails today, and the cause is known.**
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`backend/system`'s `buildUserDirPath` switches on `runtime.GOOS` with
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cases for darwin, linux and windows, and a `default:` that returns
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`errUnsupportedOS`. `runtime.GOOS` is `"android"`, so it takes the
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default, `NewYellowJacketApp` fails, and `main()` calls `os.Exit(1)` —
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about 6 ms after the bridge initialises, which is exactly the signature
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described above.
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**The fix is a documented Wails API and needs no build tags.**
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`application.Mobile.StoragePath()` returns the app's private files
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directory and returns `""` on desktop (`mobile_stub.go`), and
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`resolveUserDirPath` already lets `YJ_HOME` override the path on every
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OS — so setting that override from `StoragePath()` early in `main()`,
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when it is non-empty, is the whole change. Do *not* import
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`pkg/application` into `backend/system`: that package is deliberately
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Wails-free, which is what the `indexbuild` tag split is protecting.
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It is the *first* thing that stops it, not the only one. MPRIS is
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compiled in (`android` implies the `linux` build tag, so
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`mpris_linux.go` is in the build and will look for a session bus that
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does not exist), and the desktop shell is still a desktop shell. Fixing
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one and re-running the smoke is how you find the next.
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**And one that no amount of porting will fix:** open-*directory*
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dialogs return an error on Android — the Storage Access Framework gives
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tree URIs, not filesystem paths — as do save-file dialogs. This app's
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first run is "choose your music folder" and its library model is
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filesystem paths, so that is a design question, not a port.
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## The scaffold's own tasks
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`build/android/Taskfile.yml` ships more than the Makefile wraps, and
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they are the right thing to reach for when you want something one-off:
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```
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wails3 task android:run # debug build + emulator install + launch
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wails3 task android:run:device # same, first connected physical device
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wails3 task android:deploy-device # production APK to a device
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wails3 task android:bundle:fat # AAB, for a Play Store upload
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wails3 task android:studio # open build/android/ in Android Studio
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wails3 task android:device:list
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wails3 task android:logs:all
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wails3 task android:clean
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```
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Two are deliberately **not** wrapped. `android:logs` greps logcat for
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`(Wails|yellowjacket)`, which catches the `WailsBridge` tag but misses
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the app's own process tag (`app.yellowjacket` — lowercase, so `Wails`
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does not match it) and misses `ActivityManager`'s "has died" line, which
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is the one that tells you it crashed; `make android-logs` filters by tag
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instead. And `ensure-emulator` boots whatever `-list-avds | tail -1`
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returns, with no pidfile and no boot wait, so it cannot be stopped or
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sequenced.
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## The identity is declared twice
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`applicationId` in `build/android/app/build.gradle` is what Gradle
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installs. `APP_ID` in `build/android/Taskfile.yml` is what every
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adb-driven task uninstalls, launches and filters. **Nothing enforces
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that they agree**, and `ANDROID.md`'s advice to set `APP_ID` in
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`build/config.yml` does not work in beta.8 — `wails3 task` never reads
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that file (verified with `--dry`), and even when set it feeds only the
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adb commands, never Gradle. Change both or the official `run`/`deploy`
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tasks address a package that is not installed.
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Related, and it will bite once: the launcher activity is
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`com.wails.app.MainActivity` and the applicationId is
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`app.yellowjacket`. `am start -n app.yellowjacket/.MainActivity`
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resolves the leading dot against the *applicationId* and fails with a
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class-not-found that reads like a broken build. Always the
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fully-qualified form.
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