Process of Starting an Activity

startActivityForResult()

     ----Instrumentation.execStartActivity

     ----mainThread.sendActivityResult

Instrumentation.exeStartActivity

     ----ActiveManagerNative.getDefault().StartActivity()  ActiveManagerNative is a Binder and AMS as well

     ----checkStartActivityResult() This step is where "Unable to find explicit activity class" exception thrown

ASM.startActivity()

     ----startActivityAsUser()

          ----ActivityStack.resumeTopActivityLocked()

               ----ActivityStackSupervisor.startSpecificActivityLocked()

                    ----realStartActivityLocked()

                         ----app.thread.scheduleLaunchActivity app.thread is a IApplicationThread, which extends IInterface, so it is a binder, it defines a buntch of method that start/stop service/activity/receiver, such as scheduleLaunchActivity(), scheduleCreateService(); ActivityThread.ApplicationThread is an implementation of this method

ActivityThread.ApplicationThread.scheduleLaunchActivity()

     ----sendMessage(H.LAUNCH_ACTIVITY) just send a message to handler to start activity

The Handler.handleMessage() deal with LAUNCH_ACTIVITY; RELAUNCH_ACTIVITY; PAUSE_ACTIVITY...; and LAUNCH_ACTIVITY will call performLaunchActivity() method

performLaunchActivity() does following things:

1. getComponent infromation(ComponentName class)

2. Instrumentation.startActivity() will create activity instance by class loader: 

     activity = classLoader.loadclass(ClassName).newInstance()

3. Create application by LoadApk.makeApplication(), if the application hasn't been created

4. Create ContextImpl instance, and build the relationship with activity by activity.Attach()

5. Call Activity.onCreate()