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The Android Context, Manifest, and the Android System
All Android Developers come across the Android Context daily even for the most basic applications, but because the Context can be used under various circumstances for different reasons, it can be hard to absorb, resulting in lots of developers forming varying impressions around it.
Consequently, many developers will just “pass a context” when needed through the Application or Activity objects without further thinking since their code will build and run; a tactic that may lead to memory leaks and nasty app crashes due to poor usage of the Context in the application code.
Also, ambiguity about what the Context is, or why it is used, prevents developers from having a clear picture of the code they write, and the libraries they use.
But much of the confusion around the Context begins by not realizing how closely the Manifest is related to the Context, and by not knowing that by looking at them together, can expose much about how Apps are coupled with the Android System.
This article will approach the Manifest and the Context in respect to the underlying Android architecture, for the reader to understand what they semantically represent from an application’s mechanics standpoint.
