"RokuJoel" wrote:
This is a security fix. You should not be able to install private channels via the ECP. If there is some business case for doing this let me know.
I already pointed out one use case of invoking the channel details (app info) screen
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=90823#p510598 . That is broken now for some tens of thousands of installs of the app.
Here is another use case for invoking the channel info screen - on much smaller scale but perhaps this one will hit closer to home, given that once upon a time you (RokuJoel) were developing Roku apps outside RokuCo's citadel - which is the situation me and most developers are in.
So, what use do i have for the app details screen? -
I use a private channel's details screen to prepare a public channel for publishing. In particular, checking if the channel description fits the details screen or gets truncated (there is no other way to do that. NONE whatsoever!). Verifying that the screenshots and posters will display well when published in Channel Store. Double-checking that the (web store) metadata has the correct version number.
How do i do that? Well, app details screen is available only for published channels - but i want to see it before submitting the "public" channel for review. Sounds like Catch 22? "Private" channel to the rescue - it has been advocated before as good practice by the old-salts for beta testing and i have embraced the practice. I create a private "beta" channel and a public "release" candidate and populate their properties in the same way (copy&paste) - except: name and vanity-code (which must be different), as well as poster image (which i change so i can tell the 2 channels apart on the player home screen). I even use the same bundle/package, i.e. no different build for the "public" channel but instead copy the already tested app build from the beta/private channel to the public candidate.
So, back to our ECP app details screen. After populating the channel properties and publishing the private channel, to verify how the result may look one day in Channel Store, i'd do:
$ curl -i -d "" http://192.168.1.28:8060/launch/11?ContentID=75561
and get this on TV screen:
And from this screen i can check the description, version, poster and screenshots - and correct them as needed.
But now... now this has stopped working in fw 7 and there is no alternative to it! I took offline one of my players to keep it on fw 6 but that's not sustainable, sooner or later it will (have to) update.
