Determine if running on a rooted device

Question

My app has a certain piece of functionality that will only work on a device where root is available. Rather than having this feature fail when it is used (and then show an a

Answer 1

Some modified builds used to set the system property ro.modversion for this purpose. Things seem to have moved on; my build from TheDude a few months ago has this:

cmb@apollo:~$ adb -d shell getprop |grep build
[ro.build.id]: [CUPCAKE]
[ro.build.display.id]: [htc_dream-eng 1.5 CUPCAKE eng.TheDudeAbides.20090427.235325 test-keys]
[ro.build.version.incremental]: [eng.TheDude.2009027.235325]
[ro.build.version.sdk]: [3]
[ro.build.version.release]: [1.5]
[ro.build.date]: [Mon Apr 20 01:42:32 CDT 2009]
[ro.build.date.utc]: [1240209752]
[ro.build.type]: [eng]
[ro.build.user]: [TheDude]
[ro.build.host]: [ender]
[ro.build.tags]: [test-keys]
[ro.build.product]: [dream]
[ro.build.description]: [kila-user 1.1 PLAT-RC33 126986 ota-rel-keys,release-keys]
[ro.build.fingerprint]: [tmobile/kila/dream/trout:1.1/PLAT-RC33/126986:user/ota-rel-keys,release-keys]
[ro.build.changelist]: [17615# end build properties]

The emulator from the 1.5 SDK on the other hand, running the 1.5 image, also has root, is probably similar to the Android Dev Phone 1 (which you presumably want to allow) and has this:

cmb@apollo:~$ adb -e shell getprop |grep build
[ro.build.id]: [CUPCAKE]
[ro.build.display.id]: [sdk-eng 1.5 CUPCAKE 148875 test-keys]
[ro.build.version.incremental]: [148875]
[ro.build.version.sdk]: [3]
[ro.build.version.release]: [1.5]
[ro.build.date]: [Thu May 14 18:09:10 PDT 2009]
[ro.build.date.utc]: [1242349750]
[ro.build.type]: [eng]
[ro.build.user]: [android-build]
[ro.build.host]: [undroid16.mtv.corp.google.com]
[ro.build.tags]: [test-keys]
[ro.build.product]: [generic]
[ro.build.description]: [sdk-eng 1.5 CUPCAKE 148875 test-keys]
[ro.build.fingerprint]: [generic/sdk/generic/:1.5/CUPCAKE/148875:eng/test-keys]

As for the retail builds, I don't have one to hand, but various searches under site:xda-developers.com are informative. Here is a G1 in the Netherlands, you can see that ro.build.tags does not have test-keys, and I think that's probably the most reliable property to use.