Performance improvement suggestion

[nbd-boss]

Dear developers,

I am analyzing MifareClassicTool using a static code checker. I found some potential slow operations in MifareClassicTool's UI thread.

Android documentation says this:

http://developer.android.com/training/articles/perf-anr.html

"Any method that runs in the UI thread should do as little work as possible on that thread. In particular, activities should do as little as possible in key life-cycle methods such as onCreate(). Potentially long running operations such as network or database operations, or computationally expensive calculations such as resizing bitmaps should be done in a worker thread (e.g., via AsyncTask)."

I found that the following file system operations are running on the UI thread：

MifareClassicTool.Activities.DumpEditor.onCreate() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Common.readFileLineByLine().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.DiffTool.processChosenDump() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Common.readFileLineByLine().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.KeyMapCreator.onCreateKeyMap() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.MCReader.setKeyFile().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.MainMenu.onCreate() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.MainMenu.copyStdKeysFiles().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.UidLogTool.onCreate() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.UidLogTool.updateUidLog().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.KeyEditor.onCreate() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Common.readFileLineByLine().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.ImportExportTool.onActivityResult() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.ImportExportTool.backupDumpsAndKeys(), MifareClassicTool.Activities.ImportExportTool.saveConvertedDataToContent(), and MifareClassicTool.Activities.ImportExportTool.readConvertAndSaveImportData().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.DiffTool.onActivityResult() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.DiffTool.processChosenDump().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.UidLogTool.onNewIntent() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.UidLogTool.updateUidLog().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.onActivityResult() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.readDumpFromFile().

The following events involve performing synchronous NFC hardware I/O operations:

MifareClassicTool.Activities.CloneUidTool.onNewIntent() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.CloneUidTool.writeManufacturerBlock().
MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.onActivityResult() synchronously calls MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.checkDumpAgainstTag(), MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.writeBlock(), MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.writeValueBlock(), and MifareClassicTool.Activities.WriteTag.runValueTransferRestore().

Do you think these slow operations will affect MifareClassicTool's performance (e.g., make GUI not smooth enough)? If yes, perhaps moving them to a separate thread can help make MifareClassicTool super smooth in user interaction. Looking forward to your reply and hope I can help improve MifareClassicTool.

[ikarus23]

Yeah, this all looks legit. I even know that it is bad practice to do stuff in the UI thread. But I was young, lazy and programming was/is just a hobby. ;)

I don't think I will fix all this. Just not enough time. I mean at this point it would be best to rewrite the whole app. The code is really bad. I know because I wrote it starting 13 years ago and never really refactored.

I will leave this issue open. Maybe somebody else want to do work on this. (Unfortunately none of this will speed up the key mapping process, the slowest and part of the app.)