android:allowBackup=false but BackupAgent still required

Question

I busy designing an app (Android Studio 1.3.1) for Android ver 4.4.2 and would like the app to be started immediately after boot-up. My problem is that it doesn't and on debugging I found that it complains about a missing BackupAgent. I have set android:allowBackup to false in the manifest but this doesn't seem to help remove the exception about the missing BackupAgent.

Am I miss-understanding the purpose of android:allowBackup?

I don't require any backing up.

Answer 1

Seems like those are different from eachother:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/application-element.html

<application android:allowTaskReparenting=["true" | "false"]
             android:allowBackup=["true" | "false"]
             android:backupAgent="string"

And: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/backup/BackupAgent.html

Provides the central interface between an application and Android's data backup infrastructure. An application that wishes to participate in the backup and restore mechanism will declare a subclass of BackupAgent, implement the onBackup() and onRestore() methods, and provide the name of its backup agent class in its AndroidManifest.xml file via the <application> tag's android:backupAgent attribute.

And you need to add this in your ApplicationTAG -> Manifest:

android:backupAgent

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Also, you may want to take a look:

Most applications shouldn't need to extend the BackupAgent class directly, but should instead extend BackupAgentHelper to take advantage of the built-in helper classes that automatically backup and restore your files. However, you might want to extend BackupAgent directly if you need to:

• Version your data format. For instance, if you anticipate the need to revise the format in which you write your application data, you can build a backup agent to cross-check your application version during a restore operation and perform any necessary compatibility work if the version on the device is different than that of the backup data. For more information, see Checking the Restore Data Version.

• Instead of backing up an entire file, you can specify the portions of data the should be backed up and how each portion is then restored to the device. (This can also help you manage different versions, because you read and write your data as unique entities, rather than complete files.)

• Back up data in a database. If you have an SQLite database that you want to restore when the user re-installs your application, you need to build a custom BackupAgent that reads the appropriate data during a backup operation, then create your table and insert the data during a restore operation.