aafm revision 4

It's been too long since the last update to aafm, "the Android ADB File Manager", which is a shame! I guess I should apologise, but I've been horribly busy these last months. I didn't even have time to write a post apologising about not having time! Hah! Anyway, let's fix it right now!

The latest revision incorporates some rad fixes by Norman Rasmussen and Michał Kowalczuk, namely:

  • Adds BusyBox support (by sammael). In other words, it means that people using Cyanogen Mod devices can now use aafm to browse their files! Hooray!
  • Handle device drops when there's no row present (by normanr). An apparently silly issue that can be very confusing when it happens to you.
  • Handle symlinks on the device correctly (by normanr). Excellent!
  • Quote/Unquote special characters in drag&drop messages (by normanr). Superb!

On my side, and apart from merging and testing the changes, I've worked on...

  • Slightly improving the README. Clarify how to find out the device Id, and add link to PyGTK binary for Mac users. I recently found that there is a readily available PyGTK binary build for Mac OS, which means that you can now use aafm with Mac as well. It is slightly buggy but even then it's way better than transferring files from within Eclipse or using the Android file transfer Mac "utility"*
  • Moving the TO DO list items that were on the README file over to the issue tracker in the project's page. That is more trackable/visible (or that I hope!).

I love the fact that there's random people using the software and also submitting great patches. I'd like to think that's because the code is simple enough and the app is useful enough too! (OK, GitHub making things easy might be part of the reasons as well, I reckon).

There is now quite a long list of issues at the GitHub project page. Feel free to dig in and send a patch (or pull request in GitHub parlance) and help make Android users' lives a little bit better!

* Because, to my enormous surprise, MTP devices such as ... Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich and co do not work in Mac OS either...!