Does Android use sparse files similar to Bluestacks? - android

I have Bluestacks installed on my windows8 machine and I was poking around its files and folder structure. I see that in Bluestacks, app data is stored under Android/Data.sparsefs/Store or Android/SDCard.sparsefs/Store
How similar is this to the actual Android OS? Does the OS have the same folder structure and/or sparse files? (or roughly the same) If not, what is the difference and how does the Android structure look like?

When you install an application you have this folder:
/data/data/"your package name"
example:
/data/data/myappexample
Use the DDMS to access for your Emulator.
inside this path you have:
databases/: databases
lib/: libraries for the app
files/: other related files
shared_prefs/: preferences and settings
cache/: caches

Related

android Use Linux tools stored at assets folder

I want to use tools from Linux which not available in Android by default such as iw and iperf. I saw Android applications that use this tools (like this). There are two ways to do it.
First: get root rights on device and put file of the tool to the system/bin/ folder.
Second: put file of the tool to assets folder of Android project and somehow use it.
Applications from Play Market use second way. But I don't know, how it cuold be done. Is there any description of implementation of second way?
https://xjaphx.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/store-and-use-files-in-assets/
This the best example of what you want to do.
For putting executable in assest see
https://stackoverflow.com/a/5642593/775964

How to use a Android Studio project on two computers?

I use two computer for coding. My desktop pc and the notebook. I sync the two computers with dropbox. How can I import/load a project on each of this two computers? The project base folder is different on each computer. When I try to load/import a project which is created on the other computer it loads the project but I got a error with a wrong path.
"Gradle "Test2Project" project refresh failed:
Could not fetch model of type "IdeaProject" using Gradle distribution "http://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-1.6.zip".
Project directory "C:\Users\thomas\AndroidStudioProjects\Test2Project" does not exist."
The wrong pfad is the right pfad on the other computer. How can I import Android Studio projects so that it works even on another computer with a different folder structure?
Like the others i agree, that using a VCS would be the best solution. Even though you can try to filter all android studio related files (like *.iml, .idea folder and local.properties). I don't know if you can do this with dropbox or if you need some kind of 3rd software.
After that you should be able to make source code changes on both computers without greater problems. (You may have to declare project dependencies changes for the android studio twice)
Builds depending on the build.gradle files should work to. But again: using a VCS is the better way to go.
Go for git, you can use bitbucket.com as a free remote repository.
This is a problem I have ran into when trying to store Android projects in a Dropbox folder. What happens is that Machine 1's IDE is mapping system resources (like the SDK) as being in that machine's filesystem. When you go to Machine 2, everything will work EXCEPT for what you expect--because the SDK will probably be in a different spot!
One way to get around this is to use your VCS (dropbox, git, whatever) as a repository for JUST your source files, and then have a local project created on each machine that reads from the Dropbox folder. This requires two separate projects that are mapped differently, but that have the same source folder.
I discovered this problem when I tried to load up an Android project on a new install on a Mac machine:
Do you see what's happening there? My Mac Android Studio is saying, "Hey, I don't see where "C:\Android\SDK is, but I do see that you have an Android SDK in a different folder, so I'm going to update your project files to reflect the actual location of the SDK."
In my opinion, the only way around this is to create your project on both machines, and version control your source and assets folder. If you don't create the project separately on each machine and use VCS for just the source and assets, the only way to get around build and filepath errors is to store your SDK in the same folder on each machine. This worked for me when I was building on a Windows desktop and Windows laptop, but no longer works for me since I am using a Macbook Pro.
I know this was questioned about 4 years ago, but this is up to now still an issue. Using a VCS seems like a good solution, but for me it is simply more overhead than i want to have. I also use Dropbox to synchronize my folders and the history they provide is for my private programming needs good enough. So i think, it would be good, if android studio simply uses relative paths.
I know it needs some system paths and it does a good job in looking at the local.properties and setting it to the correct place when the project is loaded.
The main problem with using Dropbox are the build-directories. There are many many references to fully qualified paths in the files within these directories. So my solution was to exclude the build-directories from Dropbox-synchronisation.
When you work at your laptop, build the app, create new files, change files or delete files, the build on your pc will be completely outdated when you switch back to it. but android studio will recognize this and do a fresh build when you start your project for the first time after working on the laptop.
so the biggest problem at this point is the file local.properties and this is handled correctly by android studio. it may be a good idea (or a really bad one, i don't know the drawbacks) when the build system wouldn't write fully qualified paths in the files within the build directory.
But up to now this is my solution for using Dropbox and not using a VCS:
exclude build-paths from Dropbox synchronisation
i hope this helps somebody.

Erros in trying to synchronize Eclipse workspace files across a Windows machine and an Ubuntu machine; which files must or must not be included?

I have been developing an Android app on a Windows machine. Now I would like to continue development on another Ubuntu 10.04 LTS machine. I would like to move between computers maintaining a recent copy of the project files on each computer. I am using SpiderOak to create a synchronization of the workspace directories of Eclipse which I am using for development. When the files were copied from the Windows machine onto the Ubuntu machine and I ran Eclipse, an error was presented that the path to the java sdk could not be validated and the path shown was the path relevant to the Windows machine.
Is there a simple solution to this? I can imagine that some files regarding the workspace specifics should not be transferred. Can I simply omit transferring the .metadata folder contained in each workspace created by Eclipse? I am not interested in synchronizing preferences/plugins/parts not essential to the operation of the app. Will excluding the .metadata from the sync create another problem in not transferring valuable information regarding the Android app being developed?
The correct, simplest, and most robust way to do what you want is to use a version control system like CVS, svn, git, etc. Even when working alone on a project, its a wise idea, not just for having the code on different computers but also because it gives you all the benefits of version management like being able to rollback changes, etc.
There are many free or inexpensive cvs, svn, and git hosting options; I strongly suggest you get an account and check your code in/out on the two machines you work on. If you have a web hosting provider, chances are they provide one of these services with your account.
If you're going to insist on manually moving/syncing code, you need to know that Eclipse workspaces are NOT designed or intended to be shared. Trying to do so always leads to headaches and other pain. Instead, you can export/import the project(s), not the workspace. Keep in mind that in Eclipse, a Project does not have to be located in the workspace directory; when you create a project there's an option to store it in any arbitrary location on your filesystem. Also note that all files under the project (including .project and .classpath) should be shared, except generated stuff like bin/ and gen/. This applies to using cvs, svn, etc or some other manual syncing mechanism.
As long as I have my project source code on hand, I will never consider synchronizing Eclipse workspace directory for cross-platform development. The correct way is maintain your source separately (by separately, I means do not bind your source to any IDE on any OS, use version control system is always recommended if the condition allows), wherever your want to start development by Eclipse or IntelliJ, on Windows, Linux or Mac, get a copy of you source and import it into your IDE.
Generally, the only files that makes your project a Android Project are:
src/
res/
assets/
lib/ (if you import external jar libraries)
AndroidManifest.xml
project.properties (or default.properties, renamed since r14)
proguard.cfg (if you use Proguard)
If you work within a team and use source control like SVN, these are the only required folders/files that need checked in to SVN, all others (.project, .classpath, .settings/, bin/, target/ and etc.) are not necessary. thoese are iteratively generated by IDE when import and build your project.
This applies to all three Android project type (Android Project, Libaray Project and Test Project), If you are familiar with other build tools like Ant or Maven, it may also helps you a lot to maintain cross-platform development.

offline installation of an Android PLATFORM on Windows?

Okay so I have followed instructions on earlier questions in order to offline install the Android SDK, platform-tools and tools, and now I am trying to install an Android platform. (When I run "android list targets", it returns that there are no available targets, and the platforms folder is empty).
What types of files are actually IN the platforms directory? I have files from the repository like "system.img" and "kernel-qemu", but I don't know where to put them.
Could someone let me know what their C:\Android\platforms folder structure actually looks like for a working installation?
(NB: for background, I am able to get to the URL "dl-ssl.google.com" through my browser and even the Eclipse internal browser, but for some reason it can't be accessed from the SDK manager, so I can't download any components or platforms!!)
For what purpose you want to install android platform? If you want to develop apps, you need a lot of stuff from platform folder except "system.img" and "kernel-qemu": android.jar, ant tasks, tools and a lot of resources. If you want just to run emulator, you probably need not all of that...
This is contents of my platform folder: http://ccfit.nsu.ru/~izhovkin/list.txt

Android Eclipse, Dropbox, Windows and Linux

I'm using my Dropbox folder to store my Eclipse workspace in (instant back ups) but want to develop on both Linux and Windows. (I think) the workspace file stores the location of the Android SDK which is different on both machines /home/android... and c:\android.
Is there any way of developing on Windows one minute and Linux the next? (the issue is the directory of the Android SDk.
thanks
The best solution is source version control, checkout a comparison table on Wikipedia.
I use Dropbox for this two, I switch between Windows, Mac and Linux. This is how I do it:
Put the Windows version in the Dropbox
Create a new Android Project with the same name in Linux somewhere other than Dropbox
Delete the assets, res and src folders and replace them with softlinks to the ones in Dropbox
This way each OS has it's own project files, but anytime you update a resource or code file it will update on all OS's.

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