title: Start android application without activity
body: <p>I've an application which aims to run only as a service (no interface, just run in background). I have no activity mentioned in my AndroidManifest.xml but put a receiver to start the application at phone start.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;application
      android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
      android:label="@string/app_name" &gt;
      &lt;service
          android:enabled="true"
          android:name=".MyAppService"&gt;
          &lt;intent-filter&gt;
              &lt;action
                  android:name = "me.myapp.MyAppService"&gt;
              &lt;/action&gt;
          &lt;/intent-filter&gt;
      &lt;/service&gt;
      &lt;receiver
          android:enabled="true"
          android:name=".BootReceiver"&gt;
          &lt;intent-filter&gt;
              &lt;action android:name = "android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"/&gt;
          &lt;/intent-filter&gt;
      &lt;/receiver&gt;
  &lt;/application&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is that as I'm developing (using Eclipse) the application, I need to test my changes often. When I run the application (with my phone connected in debug mode), I've got a message like</p>
  
  <pre><code>[2011-12-14 00:18:40 - MyApp] Android Launch!
  [2011-12-14 00:18:40 - MyApp] adb is running normally.
  [2011-12-14 00:18:40 - MyApp] No Launcher activity found!
  [2011-12-14 00:18:40 - MyApp] The launch will only sync the application package on the device!
  [2011-12-14 00:18:40 - MyApp] Performing sync
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I start the application at run, without having to restart it every time ?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong> this is not possible anymore for Android 3.1 or above. <a href="http://commonsware.com/blog/2011/07/13/boot-completed-regression-confirmed.html">Source</a></p>