android.support.wearable.complications.ComplicationHelperActivity is deprecated

[MrCsabaToth]

See https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/wear#complications-watchface-1.0.0-alpha18 (July 21, 2021): "moved ComplicationHelperActivity to androidx.wear:wear-watchface library."
In general it'd be good to use androidx.* wherever possible.

[MrCsabaToth]

Also note https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/wear#wear_complications_and_watchface_100_2
"As of 1.0.0-alpha23, the watchface and complications libraries have been moved to a unified androidx.wear.watchface group. Please see the Wear Watchface release note page for more details."

[MrCsabaToth]

EVERYTHING is deprecated:

• android.support.wearable.complications.ComplicationHelperActivity
• CanvasWatchFaceService
• ComplicationData
• ProviderInfoRetriever
• ComplicationProviderInfo
• PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences (this is me storing the color scheme selection)
• The default constructor of android.os.Handler (EngineHandler)
• ComplicationDrawable
• WatchFaceService

There's not a bit which is not deprecated. The work was based on https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/watchface/index.html:

In the https://github.com/android/wear-os-samples repo maybe we can start off with the https://github.com/android/wear-os-samples/tree/main/WatchFaceKotlin
The current code is Java, so essentially we'd need to rewrite the whole shebang! Our current "code" code consists of two java files, the Kotlin example is about a dozen+ Kotlin files. So we'll need some simplification and surely heavy lifting to marry the concept into that example.

It'd be great to migrate to Jetpack Compose right away, but neither the basic or the advanced Compose example seems to have complications, and it'll be enough to tackle the whole rewrite in itself, so I'd go with the traditional (XML UI) Kotlin.

Also note that I've seen some Flutter Wear OS app articles and plugins (form VGV (Very Good Ventures) for example), but those seem to be not watch faces but apps. I'd be happy to go to Flutter, although that may affect battery life and app size, however I also won't tackle that right now.

[MrCsabaToth]

https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/sysaxp/new_android_studio_warning/