App name, app ID and code package: DroidDeck, com.droiddeck.launcher
(sources moved to com/droiddeck/launcher, the 68 JNI functions renamed
with them). The new app ID installs beside SteamDeck rather than over it.
Everywhere the name was the app's own: the sidebar title, the session
report, share zips, the shell title, wake-lock and log tags, User-Agents,
the Compose theme, the Download folder and switch files (droiddeck-env,
-osc, -driver, -tu-debug, -no-pad, -pad-log, -no-hud, -wlr-renderer; the
old names are not read), and inside the runtime (droiddeck-desktop,
Firefox's droiddeck.js, the shortcuts tag, the rumble socket, debug and
cache paths). Build scripts, CI artifact (droiddeck-apk), CMake project,
README and the progress log follow.
Kept on purpose: Valve's Steam Deck (the -steamdeck flag,
steamdeck_publicbeta/stable, 'Steam Deck mode', the steamos.cloud
package URLs) and names inside the hosted desktop package (steamdeck.png,
steamdeck-steam, steamdeck-bigpicture). 'Desktop installed' now tests for
labwc instead of the launcher the app stages itself. A committed
__pycache__ .pyc is removed.
The file picker is now Bannerlator's File Manager itself (files/FileManagerScreen.kt, carried over
whole with its rail, favourites, grid/list, copy/cut/paste, rename, delete, properties) minus what
has no meaning without a Wine container: run, add to shortcuts, C:/Z: drives, the archive
unpacker. StorageRoots, CollapsibleRail, FavoritesStore, PeIconExtractor, OutlinedAlertDialog and
MenuStyle come with it unchanged; FileOps carries the progress copy/move. A Files tile opens it;
its pick mode chooses the ROMs folder and imports drivers.
Play and Desktop each get a cog: resolution cap (1080p default, 900p, 720p, panel), shape, HDR10,
the mode's Linux runtime driver, the display driver, touch, and per mode the on-screen controls +
audio (Steam) or the renderer (desktop). The Graphics drivers and Audio tiles are gone into them.
HDR10: HdrSupport reads the panel's HDR types; the switch is greyed with the reason unless HDR10 is
listed. On, the activity feeds the compositor's gate (nativeSetHdrDisplay + nativeSetHdrRequest),
turns zero-copy on, sets BANNER_WAYLAND_HDR=1, and the session gets BL_HDR=1 (gamescope
--hdr-enabled) and DXVK_HDR=1.
OrphanReaper kills every process of our uid but the app at session start and on an app crash: a
tree left by a killed app held the rootfs, the GPU and Steam's lock, and the next session never
came up (Thor Pro report). The drawer gains Steam menu, which sends the Guide button.
The Steam client builds Settings > Internet and its connection indicator on
NetworkManager and looks for one on the system bus as it starts. This runtime
had neither, so the page stopped with "StartScanningForNetworks is not a
function" under a header that showed no connection while downloads ran. A user
on an Odin 2 reported exactly that, and I told him it was cosmetic and unfixed -
wrongly: Max wrote the answer for WinNative (e7a224ae) and Bannerlator has
carried his port for days. This app was the only one without it.
The session now starts a small system bus and his stand-in, which reports one
connection that is up while Android has a route out and refuses what it cannot
do, since nothing here can scan for or join a network. Both the script and the
bus config come from the apk at every launch, so an installed runtime gets this
without a re-host; dbus-daemon and python-gi are already in r9.
Named bannerlator-netmanager rather than steamdeck-: CI copies
overlay/usr/local/bin/bannerlator-* by glob, so anything else would have been
built, committed and never packaged - the same shape as the proot artifact that
was produced and discarded on every run for a week.
Version 0.1.3, and the README gains a section for it.
The README had grown a section per feature in the order they were written, and
the parts that describe the whole had fallen behind: it still said version 0.1,
the ledger listed none of the drivers, audio, cores, session fixes or logs, and
the architecture diagram showed neither the audio relay nor that there are two
Turnips with two import lists.
Now: the ledger covers everything the app does with an honest state against
each - and says outright where something sets what it claims but has never been
measured; the diagram shows both driver slots and where a game's audio can go;
the session-log folder has a section of its own instead of being an appendix to
the device switches; and Installing mentions the one Android setting that
decides whether a session stays up at all, since that has cost two people an
afternoon.
The main screen, the loading overlay, the HUD line, the drawer and the three
dialogs are composables now, driven by state the activities own. The session's
SurfaceView and the on-screen pad stay Views underneath a single Compose layer,
which is what they are in any Compose app: a compositor surface and a canvas,
not menus. The XML layouts are gone; the activities extend ComponentActivity
and Back goes through its dispatcher.
A release build fails on ExpiredTargetSdkVersion, which exists because Play
will not take an sdk that old. It is right about the rule and wrong about this
app: 29+ forbids executing a file from the app's own data directory, which is
the one thing this app exists to do.
The session now belongs to a foreground service rather than the activity.
Android demotes a process as soon as its last visible activity goes and the
low-memory killer reaps the guest, so leaving Big Picture to answer a message
came back to a dead Steam; the service holds the process at perceptible
priority, a partial wake lock keeps the CPU from dropping the guest's threads,
and a high-performance WiFi lock keeps a backgrounded download from being
throttled to nothing. The notification is silent (IMPORTANCE_LOW), carries a
Stop action, and returns to the session when tapped. Back now puts the app away
and leaves Steam running; a swipe out of recents ends the session.
The compositor moved with it: it is process-wide, started once, and merely
swaps the Surface it presents into as the activity comes and goes.
Package is com.steamdeck.launcher, signed with the AOSP testkey (v1+v2+v3) so
every build installs over the last one, and CI asserts all three schemes.
The launcher icon is our own controller on a purple glow — the spirit of the
Steam tile the client entry uses, none of its geometry.
Lifts Bannerlator's Linux/gamescope runtime out into an app of its own: the
Wayland compositor, the proot session, the runtime installer, the fake-evdev
controller path and the PulseAudio server, with none of the Wine, container or
store machinery around them.
One activity installs the runtime from the same winlator-contents catalog and a
second one runs the session: compositor on a SurfaceView, gamescope and Valve's
native arm64 client under proot, a physical pad republished into the fake-input
rings, and the session's milestones on screen until the first frame arrives.
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