If I set in the Manifest.xml and try to install the .apk with ecclipse, the install fails with a missing library error showing logcat. Thats ok for me as developer.
But how will be the behaviour in Google Play?
Simply writing a failure to logcat is not useful for normal users. Useful would be if an appropriate error dialog would appear, informing the user about the error, why and how to fix it (In this case, ideally a link to the missing app in Google Play, so the user can install the missing app easily)
Does anyone know, how exactly the error is handled, if a user try to install the .apk via android market (or other market places)?
Is there a way to costumise that handling?
Based on the uses-library documentation you can use reflection to determine if a particular class is available. I haven’t done this myself but here is a blog spot in which reflection is used to determine if the device support’s live wallpapers Using Reflection to test if an Android device is using ‘Live Wallpapers’.
It must not be very hard to adapt it for other libraries.
Also, from API 7 there is a android:required value for tag that allows the application to be installed from Google Play even if the library is not present in the user’s device.
Hope this helps…