Is there any way to exclude certain files under the /res folder from being processed by the Android builder?
I have several Android projects, which I build using Eclipse. I uploaded these projects in our version-control system. The problem is, the version-control adds some "project.pj" file to every folder.
Because of these project.pj files, my projects won't build in Eclipse anymore. I get errors because the builder tries to process these files under /res. I know I can exclude these files for the /src and /gen folders, but how do I exclude them for the /res (and /assets) folders?
If you prefix any file name with a period (.) it'll be hidden from Eclipse and not included in your build.
If you're on a computer running Windows, you'll still be able to see them without issue in the Explorer. If you're on a Mac, you'll need to make sure that hidden files are being revealed if you ever want to find the file again.
actually, there are a couple of ways to get aapt to ignore such resources.
one such way is with the --ignore-assets to command-line invocation, if you can affect that (perhaps in build.xml if used).
you can also use aapt.ignore.assets= in your ant.properties, if you have that.
aapt is the program that processes the files under res/. There's no way to tell it to ignore certain files. So, short answer: you can't. Your VCS is poorly suited to Android projects. Have you heard of git?
That said, your build system can be extended to move these unwanted files out of the way, run aapt, and then move them right back. As you're using Eclipse, accomplishing this means hacking its Android plugin to add these additional steps. Or perhaps writing your own plugin that performs these steps around a call to the Android plugin -- I've never hacked on Eclipse myself, and wouldn't want to. To have any other build system (e.g. using maven, or ant, or make, or scripts) do this is as simple as understanding how that system does anything. Eclipse is just way more involved. As a final option, you can write your own scripts in the project directory that move these .pj files around, and run these scripts yourself at appropriate times, without getting any help from Eclipse.
Use ant to control build, compile process.
Related
I am working on a Java application that will run on an embedded system - a custom android build or modified AOSP. It is built on a linux server.
I would love to use an IDE like Eclipse with all its goodies like code completion, source code checking etc. but it seems very complicated. I looked at Puri's blog here
for one, the build process of our custom android uses Android.mk makefiles.
How can I (Should I?) modify the Eclipse build process to build the custom android build?
You can use either eclipse or studio to maintain a custom, pre-installed application.
In either case, you will not use the IDE to build the actual application image. That will be built as part of the make from the root of the AOSP install(1)
You can, however, create a project whose root is the directory in either /device or /package that contains your app.
Once you've done that, read the Android.mk file to find dependencies. Add them to the project as you would for any other project, for your chosen IDE.
If you go for eclipse, I suggest that you put the build directory somewhere in /out, or outside the AOSP directory altogether. If the root make file finds it, it can be a problem.
When you need to test your app on a device or an emulator, use mm to build only your app.
Better yet, if possible, do most of the development for your app as you would any stand-alone app, so that you can easily install and test it. Only put it in the AOSP directory as part of the release process.
Note, you can use either eclipse or studio to kick off that system
build. In eclipse, use External Tools. Studio provides similar
capabilities
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.
It's all in the title really: I don't want to include folders that are generated by Eclipse - I just want to know what's the minimum I need to include in my SVN backup.
I'm guessing AndroidManifest.xml, src, assets (empty in my case) and res. What about libs, which contains android-support-v4.jar? Anything else?
My SVN is external to eclipse as I have several projects in different languages and TortoiseSVN itself, which I use, is installed on my PC. So I don't want to use any integrated plug-in.
Thanks.
PS: I checked other similar questions/answers but none really answered this.
First off, SVN is not a backup, it's version control. Don't use it as a backup.
Second, there is no difference if you use the integrated plugin, the command line client or some UI tool.
Finally, what you don't want to put in VC are generally generated files and files specific to your workspace (if multiple people are working on the code). For Android projects, generated files include the bin/ and gen/ directories. You might want to put libs/ in VC for convenience, but it is not strictly necessary, since you can get the libraries from somewhere else. On the other hand putting them in VC guarantees that everyone is using the same version. Workspace-specific files are Eclipse's .settings/, .metadata, etc. It is also advisable to keep your project code and the Eclipse workspace directory separate, so that you can recover easily when Eclipse messes up.
So, exclude the above and put everything else in VC.
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.
I am android developer.I am not aware of ant in android .I have downloaded a code from internet But It has file called build.xml but I am not able to find out what it is doing and for what purpose it is used please give some advise or some kind of tutorial.So I can understand its working thanks in advance.
When you are developing your application, Eclipse is the most convenient way of building the project.
However Ant is most useful when you come to produce a release version. You can set up your Ant build, such that it takes the same source files as the Eclipse project, yet produces a signed, zip-aligned version of the apk in completely separate output location.
By means of a custom build.properties file you can specify source and output locations, keystore names and locations and passwords. It also takes care of any Proguard obfuscation you may want.You can do all this from the command line with a single statement and know that you are going through a repeatable process, not vulnerable to a mouse click in the wrong place.
Have a look at Managing Projects from the Command Line and Building and Running from the Command Line
Take the build.xml from the sample project referred to and use it as a basis for your own project. It works pretty much out of the box.
This build file is an alternative (and less common) way to build your projects using ant.
Eclipse (and the Android plugins) do a n excellent job of saving you the trouble - just use the plugin to build your projects and export APKs.