BroadcastReceiver not working on Android 3.0

Question

I have a plugin framework which uses broadcast intents for communication between main application and plugins. On start main app sends a broadcast intent

sendBroadcast(new Intent("com.mypackage.myapp.custom.intent.action.ADDON_REQ"));

Each plugin app has a broadcast receiver registered in its manifest file.

    <receiver
        android:name="IncomingReceiver"
        android:enabled="true">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="com.mypackage.myapp.custom.intent.action.ADDON_REQ" >
            </action>
        </intent-filter>
    </receiver>

Plugin application does not have any activities defined. This framework works fine on all Android versions lower that 3.0. Starting from Honeycomb the broadcast receiver in plugin is never called. I could not fix this until I added a main activity in the plugin app. With the activity defined in manifest existing broadcast receiver started to receive broadcast messages. What is the possible reason for such behavior? Is there any way to fix this without adding activity?

Thank you

Answer 1

From honeycomb onward you need to specify a flag to start the receiving app if it's not already running: Intent.FLAG_INCLUDE_STOPPED_PACKAGES .

Intent intent = new Intent("com.mypackage.myapp.custom.intent.action.ADDON_REQ");
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_INCLUDE_STOPPED_PACKAGES);
sendBroadcast(intent);