@RokuKC wrote:"Support for sending ECP commands from within a Roku channel application has been discontinued. Channels may no longer include code in their channel application that is designed to issue any type of ECP command. Static Analysis testing has been updated to check channels for ECP commands. Channels that include ECP commands in their code will automatically be blocked from publishing to the Roku Channel Store."
The notification, you are referring about, was already in the ECP doc since OS 10 and for some time the community is well aware of that requisite for channels that are meant to be published. HOWEVER, dev app's primary goal is testing and not to be published right away as such.
ECP commands are a useful tool during the development phase for in-app testing purposes. Later in a further phase when the channel is tested and developed enough, it must pass static analysis before it can be published. Therefore adding restraints for the dev channel app is simply non-sense as these are two totally different phases "development/testing versus publishing".
@RokuBen has already passed on the suggestion of waiving this new ECP limitation in OS 12 to the dev platform team, as apparently they did not expect it to affect in-app testing.
See the related topic in the forum