XBMC as launcher

Now that XBMC is useful as a media player for my MELE (see HW acceleration thread), I also use it as a launcher.

Basic instructions

Download the APK from here.

And if you want to use an external player, check the previous post.

Advanced instructions

Important: There's already a modified manifset file uploaded here

To make xbmc work as launcher and make it persistent (this means it doesn't close when you watch a movie,and it doesn't need to load everything again when you finish a movie) you have to modify the file: "$XBMC_FOLDER/tools/android/packaging/xbmc/bin/AndroidManifest.xml".

Inside the file you can find the "intent-filter" node, we need to add an Intent for the home action.

....
<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME" />
....

If you want to xbmc appear in the default launcher as an application, don't replace the line:

<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />

If you replace LAUNCHER with DEFAULT the application won't be listed anywhere but in the "All" section of the Android application manager.

To make it persistent:

(WARNING this will make XBMC constantly consume resources, so if you have low memory everything will be slower, this doesn't seem to be the case with MELE, but if you are using emulators or other applications with high memory usage this may impact on the performance).

You need to modify the "Application" Node:

"<application android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher" android:debuggable="true" android:label="@string/app_name" android:hasCode="true">"

add the option:

android:persistent="true"

When this file was modified, the following file got modified also 

$XBMC_FOLDER/tools/android/packaging/xbmc/bin/AndroidManifest.xml.

I believe you should also modify this file with the desired options.

After modifying the xml, you have to build the apk, and install it normally.