How to install applications programmatically without opening Play Store (as Google Drive does)

Question

The logs for Google Drive shows that activity responsible for “telling” the Google Play Store to install apps is

com.google.android.apps.docs/com.google.android.apps.docs.app.PhoneskyApplicationInstallerActivity

which, apparently, “tells”

com.android.vending/com.google.android.finsky.billing.lightpurchase.LightPurchaseFlowActivity

to install required packages.

So, theoretically, one could create an intent

Intent intent = new Intent("com.android.vending.billing.PURCHASE");
intent.setClassName("com.android.vending",
        "com.google.android.finsky.billing.lightpurchase.LightPurchaseFlowActivity");
intent.putExtra(EXTRA_NAME, EXTRA_VALUE);
startActivityForResult(intent, 0);

with correct extra values and voilà!

However, calling LightPurchaseFlowActivity from non-Google signed app is failing, because they are, again apparently (according to the logs), checking the calling package’s signature:

W/Finsky(13209): [1] LightPurchaseFlowActivity.setupFromExternalPurchaseIntent: Called from untrusted package.

So, there, this can not be achieved at this moment.

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