KeelrLeek
3f56f274c5
Round fifty put the tree in the car with every row a bare line of text. This
gives the rows their sleeves and asks for albums to be drawn as a grid — the
two things the design picked that a tree alone cannot express, and the only
parts of a car screen the app actually controls.
**Artwork goes out as a `content://`, not as bytes.** media3 will carry a cover
as data in the metadata and the legacy stub Android Auto binds turns that into
a bitmap per row — inside a single Binder reply with a one-megabyte ceiling for
the whole list. Two hundred rows of even thumbnailed JPEG is a
`TransactionTooLargeException` on a list that worked yesterday. A URI is a few
dozen bytes and the host fetches only what it draws. The provider stays
`exported="false"`; each browse grants read on its own URIs to the package that
asked, which `onGetChildren` already knows.
Reaching the library needed a new `file_paths.xml` in the res overlay, and it
needs BOTH spellings of one directory. Covers live under the app's DATA dir,
which `files-path` cannot reach — that tag means `getFilesDir()`, the `files/`
subdirectory. `root-path` can, but FileProvider resolves a file through
`getCanonicalPath()` before matching, and for the primary user
`/data/user/0/<pkg>` canonicalises to `/data/data/<pkg>`, so a root scoped to
`/data/user/` never matches on a phone. `/data/user/` still earns its place:
a car's driver profile is user 10 and does not canonicalise away.
The grid is `CONTENT_STYLE_BROWSABLE_HINT` on the parent's `LibraryParams` —
grid for `ss:albums` and for an artist's albums, list for artists and tracks.
Those keys belong to the host rather than to media3, which is why the same
constants serve a phone-projected car and a head unit alike.
**Three failures, one cause: a catch with nothing in it.** `artUri` returned
null on any throw and said nothing, and every row came back coverless with the
database, the res overlay and the APK all checking out — the binary XML was
dumped out of the APK to prove the root was in there. It cost an afternoon and
two wrong diagnoses. One `Log.w` in the catch named both real bugs in a single
run: `JSONObject.optString` returns the four-character string `"null"` for a
JSON null rather than `""`, so the tabs were handing `File("null")` to the
provider (`isNull` is checked first now); and the canonical-path substitution
above, which is visible ONLY in that exception's text — `readlink -f` on the
device does not show it, and believing it cost the first wrong answer. The
warning latches to one line per process, because two hundred identical traces
would bury the tree logging it sits beside.
The prober reports each row's `iconUri` now. A tree walk could say a row
arrived but never whether it would be drawn with anything, which is the one
thing this round changes, and `art:""` against a real `content://` is the whole
difference.
Verified on the Pixel 6a through Android Auto's own binder with the app cold:
both albums come back carrying
`content://com.soulstream.app.fileprovider/ss_library_canonical/...cover.jpg`.
The car screen itself is still the Desktop Head Unit's to show.
handoff/ — the Android port's pending work
Saved 2026-09-14 when the session ended. Nothing here is on main; main holds
only rounds that were built, walked on the device and committed.
rounds/— every round's patch script and commit message, and the insertion files they read. Rounds 43 to 48 are written and verified but not yet shipped; 49 is incomplete (authoring was stopped mid-flight). The earlier ones are kept because a patch is the record of how a round was made.tools/— the pipeline.preflight.shapplies a wave in order to a throwaway copy;chain.shpatches and ships a list of rounds;reset-tree.shputs the tree back after a failure (a plaingit checkout --leaves new files behind and trips the round's own re-run guard);compare-walks.shandbaseline-mock-steps.txtare the A/B for the unverified adaptive-wait change;audit-commands.cjslists backend commands the phone never calls.notes/— the Android Auto design in full, and the icon background comparison mock (openicon-mock.htmldirectly; it needs no server).
Start with ../HANDOFF-2026-09-14-android-auto-and-icon.md.