Enabling a ContentProvider in a persistent process doesn't work properly?

Question

I don't know if anyone has tried this before but if you are developing an Android platform key signed persistent app with a ContentProvider that is enabled programmatically at runtime using PackageManager#setComponentEnabledSetting(...) you may discover that after enabling it other processes can see the provider (ContentResolver#acquireContentProviderClient(...) returns a non-null client), but all attempts to invoke the provider hang the caller forever. It doesn't matter if you use PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP or not. I'm not sure if this bug exists in all versions of Android but I am seeing it in Jelly Bean 4.2 (which isn't saying much since there seem to be lots of bugs in that version).

Answer 1

The fix is to use PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP and then immediately invoke:

android.os.Process.killProcess(android.os.Process.myPid())

Then the process will be restarted and the ContentProvider that was programmatically enabled will start working properly.