Friday, March 22, 2013

AndroidLibFragmentation

While the move to having android testing in the same
project via the next ADT and tools major revision solves some problems there is still an underlying set of problems. What do you do when the android lib uses a different build system than your project as far as workflow to avoid just copying files over all the time.

The problem gets more complicated as the IDE eclipse only allows one src per project, etc. But if we do some simple changes to our build scripts and workflow it can work. How?

It starts with a very simple gem of trick or hack:

OurAndrdoid LibProjectModified/
     ourbuildscript
     ourcheckstyle
     TheAndroidRemotereferenceUpstream/

See what I did there? This trick establishes a way to put in a project build overlay that plugs into the parent project build without forcing us to use maven and it allows for the updating of the android lib from a 3rd party via the upstream reference.

Yes, when Google switches to using Gradle you will still have to change whatever default gradle build script Google comes up with but thishack the changes will be minimal.

Friday, March 15, 2013

GoogleIO2013

So we know that Key Lime Pie, Android 5.0, will be announced at GoogleIO2013.  But other underlying important stuff also might be announced.

New release of support library, how much of android 5.0 will be back ported to prior OS version via this library?

Will ADT, next release, integrate the new Gradle Build system? The last update in Jan as far as previews not everything was in place for the Gradle Build according to this doc. Thus far as preview 3 they started testing the instrumented test integration using gradle. That still leaves emma, NDK, and integration with the ADT plugin. But hey they finally fixed the default compile target to now be 1.6.

Motorola before it disbanded its eclipse plugin dev staff donated its plugins for android to the project. Will we see a new build of this included in the new release of ADT?

If we reach 1 billion devices activated during GoogleIO will Google suprise us with some new goodie at IO? Maybe Motorola X or HTC One?

Friday, March 8, 2013

EasyAnt for Android

As you know Google will be moving the android adt plugin build system for android apps from ant to gradle which is groovy based. But, we do not know when that might be and work on the independent gradle based plugin for android app development has stopped.

The Apache EasyAnt project has just released their first incubation release, 0.9. It uses Ivy as the build model mechanism with plugins defining build tasks and build lifecycles similar to Gradle except you are still using ant.

I am going to look into how to do a plugin to create the android app build lifecycle as a stop gap for when the adt build changes from ant to gradle as I do not want fully switch to gradle just yet. At the moment the eclipse plugin easyant4e has not released any code out in public yet, however that may change soon.

The move to do this presents some interesting challenges such as can we do the ant macros used in the android app build as easyant modules/plugins. It should be interesting.


Thursday, March 7, 2013

Poetry

So I was going through a pre-interview process for a firm and started describing the QA tooling I am building and its influence on the private widget UI set I am building for android.  The co-owner had described it as poetry.

Not that poetry is not a bad thing, its just my definition of poetry is different. While most teachers were trying to shove Frost down my throat I was getting into different poetry. Anything different from Gene Autry to Poe, etc.

Poetry to me is not scamming a float from customers such as Groupon does but something beautiful that is hidden and reveals itself as you experience it. Now something that empowers without scamming such as a tool for a specific social activity, that is something as a startup I can get into as far as making a joining as developer investment.

Its not that Google or Facebook are not good social platforms its that I want to be involved earlier say when the thing is at $280k in revenue less than 12 employees and hundreds of thousands end viewers. Its poetry because you are involved in part in creating that hidden beauty that gets revealed to the users of that platform.