I am trying to automate the android build process using Jenkins
I am using the following site to achieve this
Link to site
I am successfully able to Build it on my own machine. Initially i got error saying that build.xml file not found (build using ant requires this file). So i execute "android update project". So it automatically generate all necessary file for ant.
Now my problem begins when i tried to host my repo to remote server and tried to build from another machine. The error it is giving is the sdk.dir is not correct. When i analysed the project folder ther is a file called local.properties which contains the SDK path of my first machine which is wrong for other machines. So i add that file to gitignore. Now that file is not tracking and because of this the build is failing.
So is there any way to automatically generate the files that is necessary for ant after jenkins is cloning project from the remote repo?
From the website you link to, they precisely explain how to configure sdk.dir:
Configuring the environment
When jenkins builds your project with Ant, it needs to know where your
android sdk folder is. To do this, click Advanced on the Ant target
build step you just configured and add the following variable to the
Properties field. sdk.dir=/opt/android-sdk-linux/
Don’t forget to substitute the value of the variable with the correct
location where the Android SDK is installed on your build server.
Job configuration is done. Click Save. Time to test your build.
We also build android apps with Jenkins, and also need to edit the local.properties.
In my case, I have the file updated with the path to SDK by the Jenkins build itself. Just before the build starts.
You can use a simple sed command on linux or echo the content on windows (overwriting content).
Example flow:
SCM - get sources
Edit the local.properties (as suggested before)
Run ant build
Note - if you are using the "Invoke Ant", you should add an "Execute Shell" step before to deal with the editing of the local.properties.
I hope this helps.
Yes.
If you install the Android Emulator Plugin for Jenkins, you can add the "Create Android build files" build step to your job.
This will automatically detect any Android app, test or library projects in your Jenkins workspace and add/update the build.xml and local.properties files as necessary.
Alternatively, if you're using the Ant build step and already have the build.xml in your repository, you can ignore the need to create a local.properties file, by specifying the sdk.dir property yourself in the Advanced Ant options.
You can configure ant properties in jenkins. So you can specify all properties of your local.properties through the jenkins job configuration.
Of course you will have to install the android sdk on the jenkins build server.
Please read this for info on how setting ant properties with jenkins.
It's not a good practice to put the local.properties under source code management since multiple developers and CI will have different values for those properties.
you can edit the local.properties file in the jenkins workspace folder to the correct sdk path
I think you want to add the build step "Create Android build files" to your configuration. Place it before the ant build.
This invokes the android update project and android update lib-project. Make sure you referenced your library dependencies in the project.properties with relative paths. Like this:
# Project target.
target=Google Inc.:Google APIs:19
android.library.reference.1=../external-libs/google-play-services_lib
android.library.reference.2=../external-libs/android-support-v7-appcompat
Related
Lately I came to know the power of Gradle as a build system and as an Android developer I wanna understand it deeply.
One article said the following:
You can execute all the build tasks available to your Android project using the Gradle wrapper command line tool. It's available as a batch file for Windows (gradlew.bat) and a shell script for Linux and Mac (gradlew.sh), and it's accessible from the root of each project you create with Android Studio.
To run a task with the wrapper, use one of the following commands:
On Windows:
gradlew task-name
Now I have some doubts which goes as follow:
What is Gradle Wrapper and gradlew.bat?
If I've got Android studio installed and it is using gradle to build my apps (so gradle is already installed on my system), do I still need to install gradle for build purpose from command line? As when i write any commend like gradle, gradlew on my command line I get error saying gradlew is not recognized as internal or external command (the same error for other commands). I may be using it on wrong path, help me on what path do I need to use Gradle related command?
If I need to download and install it, how and where can I find the file? And the other processes?
I am using a Windows machine for this.
The Gradle Wrapper is an optional part of the Gradle build system. It consists of four files that you check into version control system. The Unix start script <your root project>/gradlew, the <your root project>/gradlew.bat Windows start script, <your root project>/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar which contains the class files for the wrapper and is started by the start scripts and <your root project>/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties which contains some configuration for the wrapper, for example which Gradle version to use to build the project.
In my opinion, each and every Gradle project, even the tiniest, should make use of the Gradle wrapper.
The Gradle wrapper makes sure your build is always run with the same Gradle version, no matter who executes the build and where or that Gradle is installed or not, as long as the one uses the Gradle wrapper to build the project. This means you can design your build for that Gradle version and be sure that the build will not fail, just because someone is using a different version of Gradle and thus is also an important step in build reproducibility.
Also, someone wishing to build your project only needs to have Java installed and that's it. He does not need to have any Gradle version installed. Actually any already installed Gradle version is ignored. The Gradle wrapper checks whether in ~/.gradle/ the version that is necessary for the build is already present, because some Gradle wrapper of any project put it there already. If it is present already, it is used, otherwise it is automatically downloaded.
If you type gradlew on the commandline and the command is not found, that means you didn't put your root projects path to the PATH environment variable (I wouldn't recommend doing that either), nor are you currently in your root project's directory. To run a Gradle build, you have to be anywhere inside your project and call Gradle or the Gradle wrapper. But like with any executable file that is not on the path, you have to provide its path of course. So if you are in your root project directory, you can simply do gradlew. if you are in <root project dir>/foo/bar/, you would need to call ../../gradlew.
The Gradle Wrapper files are generated by the implicitly available Gradle task wrapper and then get checked into the VCS of the project in question. If those four files are not present for a project, it does not use the Gradle wrapper and you should post an improvement request to the project to add it.
If some project does not use the Gradle wrapper, but builds with Gradle, you can either install Gradle and use gradle instead of gradlew, or you can even call the Gradle wrapper of any other project that you have available on disk. The build will then be run with the Gradle version that wrapper or Gradle installation is using and thus might not behave as expected, which is why really each and every project should use the wrapper if it uses Gradle.
Edited after comments
Gradle is a build system.
This gradle-wrapper is kind of the primary interface to to build Android projects. It the part of Gradle-build-system and does some primary check if gradle in installed or not.
gradlew.bat - its a batch file used on Windows. You can even open it with a notepad to view the instructions in it. Batch files are like 'commands' written in a file to be executed. You use it (in case of Windows) to execute build commands. It also checks if gradle is installed or not. And in case it is not, it downloads and installs it.
Example : to build android app on Windows:
Open command prompt
Navigate to your project's root directory
execute gradlew.bat assembleDebug
It starts the wrapper, checks if Gradle is installed there and
executes all the 'gradle specific' commands to build your project.
Do you need to install Gradle ?
Actually, no. Its the job of this gradlew script to check for that. If gradle its not already there, it would automatically download it and use it for all later builds.
gradlew.bat IS the Gradle Wrapper (for Windows in this case). Gradle Wrapper is just a small utility that will ensure that Gradle is installed (or install it if necessary) so you can always build the project. Gradle itself allows you to manage dependencies and build configurations for your project.
If you have installed Android Studio, you have Gradle installed and are good to go. (Technically, each project will have it's own wrapper to handle installing/using Gradle)
As I mentioned above, you are good to go.
In the end Gradle is a command line tool that you use to build your project and you could very well use that directly (though you don't have to) since it is exactly what Android Studio uses to build your project.
I have a couple of Android project samples I am going to build via the commandline using ./gradlew build on Linux. Whenever I enter this command a message says "Downloading https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-3.3-all.zip". I think I already have the latest gradle under my Android Studio installation path. Why does this have to download gradle every time? Can I specify gradle as an environment variable e.g. GRADLE_HOME so that all projects can use it?
What you have in your Android Studio installation path is not significant when using the Gradle Wrapper (gradlew). It downloads the exact version of Gradle that the current build is designed for and tested with if no other build downloaded it already. The downloaded distributions are stored under ~/.gradle/wrapper/dists/. So as long as you don't delete that folder and you have multiple builds that use the same gradle distribution in the wrapper configuration, that distribution will only be downloaded by the first build you execute. The others will use the already present distribution.
We have an android project for an application, it builds without any error on our local machines. Recently had to configure jenkins for the same.
Every time we run the job the BUILD FAILED. Looking for the solution to the error we got to know that the local.properties is missing in the jenkins jobs workspace of our project.
Usually this file is created locally by Android Studio. Is there any way to get this done using gradle commands or code changes?
For our jenkins sdk.dir = "/var/lib/jenkins/tools/android-sdk"
Thanks
A simple hack - Try echoing the path to a file using shell at the same job before using any gradle command as :-
echo "<path to the sdk on jenkins" >> local.properties
You need to install a plugin to create this configuration file. For example, you can use this: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Config+File+Provider+Plugin.
But the main problem is that your local.properties file will be in another folder, so your gradlew execution won't be able to find it.
Another solution is to setup your Jenkins System configuration, adding an environment variable ANDROID_HOME and the value is path\to\your\sdk
I've got an older Android project (still using Eclipse) that I need to build from the command line. It just builds a library (.jar file), not an application (.apk file). I installed ANT, but since there's no build.xml file it doesn't do anything.
All the examples I've found say to use the "android" command to generate build configurations, but I do not have the "android" command on my PC and searching on "download android command" didn't product any useful results.
Where does one get the "android" command? Do I actually need it in my case, or will a simple generic build.xml file of some kind do the trick?
The answer is simple but not exactly easy to find (IMHO), thus this posting.
By default, the Android SDK adds its "platform-tools" sub-directory to your path but the "android" command is in the "tools" sub-directory. So one just needs to manually edit the PC's PATH environment variable to add the "tools" directory.
I've a project in the IntelliJ IDEA IDE and I want to set up a parallel, production Ant build process that I can extend over time.
I have used IntelliJ's feature to create an Ant build file, and it is on the Build menu, so the Ant build process is running, and working within the IDE. All good.
But the Ant script IntelliJ has created is only compiling to class files, and is not doing a full Android build process through to an APK (as far as I can tell).
Can you point me towards a reference source (or an example) to help me understand how to get an ANT script doing a full build of an Android project?
If you know, would also be v useful to know how to then extend it to include Proguard, production signing, and inserting the production Maps key :)
Use this as a starting point:
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/other-ide.html
I don't know IntelliJ but I shoudn't be very hard to create an ant file with the most frequent commands you need.
UPDATE:
run the following command:
android create project --target 8 --name "MyFirstProject" --path /path/to/project --activity StartingActivity --package net.sample.package
This will create a project structure. This includes a build.xml file that contains targets to build the project.
To build the application, in the root folder (/path/to/project/) run:
ant debug
It should compile your application.
You may have to install or configure ant before this works correctly but you should be able to figure it out by yourself! :)
(All the info is in the link I posted earlier)
It's pretty well described in SDK documentation. Just 3 steps to make it work:
Assuming you have been developing your activity for a while with such powerful thing as IntelliJ Idea. So as Ollie mentioned in comment you don't have to create android project from scratch. Run in command line:
android update project --path "Path to your project" --target "android-X"
where X is API level
After step one build.xml was created automatically. Now you open IntelliJ, go to ant build panel and add that build.xml.
The important step is to open properties of created task and add debug OR release to command line at execution tab.
Now you can run target and enjoy the result. It will take some more efforts to compile into signed release.
Note: your existing project structure should match to android project. Please review documentation. E.g. I had external library put in "lib" subfolder and I managed it to work only after renaming "lib" to "libs"