document how to use TorService with foreground priority via binding about tor-android HOT 7 OPEN

Android's Binder model means that all the things that need Tor bind to it with BIND_IMPORTANT. That tells Android to keep it alive. Then for letting TorService quit when idle, there is a built-in mechanism to shutdown a Service when nothing is bound to it. The Android docs explicitly recommend bindService for IPC: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and-threads

More on bound services: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/bound-services

from tor-android.

Orbot does this today. OrbotService is the application specific foreground service that then binds to TorService:
https://github.com/guardianproject/orbot/blob/master/orbotservice/src/main/java/org/torproject/android/service/OrbotService.java#L759

from tor-android.

The Chromium docs outline some nice security properties of bound services:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/refs/heads/main/docs/security/android-ipc.md#binder

from tor-android.

It seems to me that we should be recommending WorkManager here also. Google is putting a lot of work into it to make it the complete background task runner. This is based on this discussion #61 (comment)

WorkManager started out for short lived background tasks, but has been extended to handle foreground and long-lived tasks:

• https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/workmanager/advanced/long-running
• https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/workmanager/how-to/define-work#quotas

from tor-android.

heya I was wondering is there any documentation on implementing torservice on android? I tried the sampleapp, which doesn't work for me as well.

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from tor-android.

@eighthave atm I couldn't even start the sampleapp. even tho I just clone it from the repo.

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