Xposed Framework creator weighs in on Lollipop, ART, and Xposed

Rovo89, the brilliant developer behind the Xposed Framework, issued an update on his plans for adding Lollipop support to the popular modification framework.

One of the under-the-hood changes brought by Android 5.0 Lollipop is the adoption of ART as the only runtime on Android, replacing the aging Dalvik. While ART brings faster app execution thanks to its use of ahead-of-time compilation, it also happens to break Rovo89’s Xposed Framework. For this reason, Xposed doesn’t work on devices running KitKat with ART, as well as on all devices running Lollipop.

In a post on XDA-Developers, Rovo89 issued an update on his work on Xposed for ART – in short, not much has changed since the last update from July, simply because the currently available Lollipop source code is still not final:

It’s pretty hard to shoot such a fast-moving target. I hope that once a final version is out and the source code for is published (with a proper branch), changes will slow down a bit – and hopefully, vendors will use it pretty much unmodified.

The bulk of the work is still ahead, and the bad news is Rovo89 is having trouble mustering the time and motivation to tackle the difficult new project:

I still don’t have time and motivation to work on Xposed as I used to, but I’m slowly starting again (no promises though).

Getting Xposed to work on Lollipop is more than figuring out ART, said the developer, as the implementation of SELinux on Android 5 is “much stricter”. In short, while there’s a good chance Xposed for Lollipop will work, that’s not a certainty, and, if it eventually happens, it won’t be anytime soon:

I can’t give any estimation when that will be the case, it depends much on my personal situation. Chance are pretty low that it will be within a month after Lollipop release, and will get higher once I start thinking about flashing a Lollipop ROM myself (which would probably be CM12, and I think these guys won’t give us a timeline either, for good reasons).

I’m still not 100% sure Xposed for Lollipop will work, but I hope that in some way it will, even if it might not be as compatible with most ROMs and as easy to install as it is for Android 4.x

How important is Xposed Framework to you? Would you hold off updating to Lollipop for it?