Here is the error I'm getting when trying to archive my app for deployment.
This error doesn't show up at any other time. The project builds and runs on emulators and devices without issue. This error has zero context or direction as to where to look to fix it. It also just randomly showed up out of nowhere, last time I built/archived (with zero functional changes) this error did not happen.
Main difference between this archival and the previous one is a newer version of VS 2017. Don't remember exactly the version from before, but am currently on 15.9.4 (stable).
Looking around on the interwebs, I've found that this error seems to have something to do with ObservableCollection's, which there are probably 10-ish in my app. Not really sure what to do here, because this has never been an issue previously, and I'm coming up on a deadline and with the structure of the app, am not in a good position to start making functional changes.
EDIT
I have also cleaned and rebuilt my solution, as well as deleting all bin/obj folders in my xamarin projects. Even tried deleting the .vs folder which can sometimes help. But still no go.
Going to try updating VS to 15.9.5 and see if maybe it was fixed in a release.
EDIT 2
Updating VS 2017 to 15.9.5 made no difference.
EDIT 3
I had my coworker try archiving the exact same project on his machine (running VS 2017: 5.9.3, and it archived fine for him. So far that's the only difference we've been able to find between our environments.
I saw the same problem using VS2017 15.9.9. Even the same code that could be archived a week ago threw the above mentioned error. It seems related to local data in the solution. A "clear" build was not sufficient. However manual deletion of the local obj and bin folders followed by archiving (build is done implicitly) solved the problem for me.
For my part closing Visual studio and deleting the .vs hidden folder did it.
It's actually a fix for many issues using Xamarin.
I had this other issue where I couldn't archive because the build process would just hang and never end. Deleting the .vs folder did it too.
https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-android/issues/1760
Just go to project property then go to Android options-> Select Advanced then increase the Java Max heap size to 2G/3G -> it's working for me.
Leon Lu's suggestion worked. I don't particularly like it, as it took forever and repairing basically restores you to a base install (no extensions or personalizations). Took about 1.2 hours to complete, but once done I was able to again archive my android application. I guess something went wrong in vs at some point, perhaps during an update. There's no way to tell.
I tried ALL of the ideas above, but had no consistent reliable luck with any of them.
I found that Microsoft has had the problem reported to them (see link below). After a ton of time burn on this, I posted at the link below one way that I've been able to get around this archive-build issue.
Like the other fixes, it's not exactly logical, and nothing that you would think would work, but I've found the process to be repeatable, which is golden for me with tight timelines and having no time for this.
MS Visual Studio Developer Community Problem 507708
Posted on a Saturday morning, a sign of really needing to get around this urgently. I hope it helps you too.
Everything with my android studio was working fine until I came across this weird thing that when I add Views inside a CardViewthe IDE is warning me telling that for example "TextView is not allowed here". I have done this a thousand times before and It was absolutely fine.
Here is a List of the things I have tried
1. Restarted the IDE.
2. Restarted the entire system.
3. Tried the Invalidate Caches/Restart thing.
4. Cleaned the peoject.
5. Verified the support library version and files
6. Banged my head against the wall.
Nothing worked, here are some additional details
IDE version 1.3.1, SDK tools is using API 22 fully updated
And one more thing is suggestions are not shown under the CardView in XML, i guess both these problems are related.
I have seen a similar question here, but unfortunately it didn't help me.... Please someone find a fix for this problem...
Well after spending a day searching around in the Intelli J IDEA docs, I was able to find a solution for this problem. It has to do with the corrupted project metadata and other project related data that is common across projects loaded into Android Studio, so naturally I just opened a backup of my project that I had backed up when the problem did not exist. And I solved it....
Hope this'll help you...
I would like to ask my fellow developers of their experience with eclipse.
I have recently started with eclipse and android, though the interface and development is not bad at all; but i have a major nagging issue.
Out of the blue eclipse or android compiler, am not sure, decides to go bonkers and misbehave. I spend so much time trying to debug and find errors in my code just to realize that a shutdown and restart of eclipse fixes it.
For example, one of my elements was returning null (using findViewById in android) - i spend about an hour trying to debug. Then decided to restart eclipse and it was fine. I wonder why?!
Is there anything that i ought to do ? ANything that i am missing with the eclipse settings. It really troubles me because it puts a brake on my development every now and then
Thanks
I personally never got comfortable with Eclipse and wound up settling on IDEA. When I had to work in C#, I found I was so stuck on it that I sprung out of my own pocket for the plugin to make Visual Studio work like IDEA
When I started to pick up Android, I begrudgingly went back to Eclipse, but once I needed to actually do something in Android, I checked back and discovered current version of IDEA (including the free one) supports Android development now too. Instructions for Eclipse all translate to it reasonably well, and the emulator won't change, so if that's where the issue is, you should find out reasonably quickly.
There are two general things that I suggest:
Fire up the emulator from outside of eclipse at startup time and leave it running (if you don’t already do this).
Add some memory to your development machine.
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I have been using Eclipse for Android development and don't have a problem with it (I also use it for Web Service and C++ development under Linux) but I want to give IntelliJ IDEA a go as it appears to have favourable reviews. This is easily possibly now that IDEA 10 has been released with Android support enabled in the Community Edition.
I have looked at IDEA and it looks pretty good to me with the only downside being the lack of UI on .xml file editing (AndroidManifest.xml for example) and the user interface builder provided with ADT 9.0.
Has anyone got experience they can share on IntelliJ IDEA and Android development?
EDIT: Thanks all; I'm sticking with Eclipse as I know it pretty well and it allows me to do pretty much anything (Java-related) I like for free. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth!
The only benefit for me: You code as fast as formula 1 :). Really. If you're used to Resharper in .NET programming, then you will code as fast as in .NET. Even faster.
Bad thing: lack of some Eclipse's tools (browse my questions for details) and it seems that Eclipse's compiler--which you can use from IntelliJ as well--is better. Because of the lack of some tools you are forced to use many 3rd party tools.
The bottom line is: if you don't have problems with Eclipse, then stick to it. I hated Eclipse's slowness and that's why I moved to IntelliJ.
EDIT 23 Jan 2013
IntelliJ has improved a lot. They now have UI visual editor, a great connection to Android SDK and at this moment I can't really think of any feature which Eclipse has and IDEA does not have. What's better, I will say again that IDEA has more features than Eclipse.
EDIT 11 Mar 2014
Again IntelliJ improved. With its visual UI editor for XML layouts and itself being used as the base for Google's Android Studio, its still the best IDE around.
The only flaws for Android developer are IMHO:
it still does not perfectly import dependencies (libraries) so you have to fix things manually
it does not perfectly recognizes other projects (modules) which sometimes you have to add those modules manually
a support for Google Glass does not exist
All this is referring to when importing projects made in Eclipse, which happens very often to anyone working on multiple Android projects.
I have used both, they aren't that different. A lot of it is just what you are used to. Personally, if you aren't having any problems with Eclipse, I would not suggest switching. There are no advantages that are worth the learning curve.
I switched to IDEA for my android development.
Intellisense actually works
IDEA is much faster
The refactoring is nicely done, and the "inspections" catch a lot of places where refactoring would make sense
Things I miss:
The new Layout viewer from Android 3.0. I always modify the layout xml, but it's nice to be able to switch over and get an idea of what it will look like without running the app. I do load up eclipse for this reason when I do heavy layout editing.
Hover documentation. In intelliJ, you have to press ctrl+Q to get the javaDoc of an existing method call (vs intellisense popping up as you code).
I know eclipse is free, but come on, I don’t know how people actually use it to build software. I like open source as much as the next guy, I just like “high quality open source” which may be an oxymoron.
I want to get work done and not fight the tool no matter how free it is.
After 2 years of Android Development on Eclipse I finally give up. I hate it because:
1. Eclipse is slow.
2. Search and autocomplete is poor.
3. Require big among of memory.
4. Crashing and hanging constantly.
5. Correct or incorrect way of closing Eclipse may cause workspace and settings crash.
Eclipse: reminding me every time I use why I normally don't use it. -
Romain Guy
You can check some of interesting IntelliJ IDEA features here
Google has introduced new intellij-based IDE for android development (if you dont want to pay for intellij), you can find more info here http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html
I am interested in this question too. For me, eclipse starts to be slow as more plugins installed: CDT, aptana, pydev, ADT....
IDEA seems like a light-weighted and interesting alternative. For the lacking of layout xml editing, you may do it with http://www.droiddraw.org/, or its desktop version. Pretty amazingly easy after reading the droiddraw tutorials.
I haven't got enough experience with IDEA, so cannot help a lot. Hope more people cast light on this issue.
Thanks,
Frank
I think Eclipse has all the features that an IDE should have these days.
But from my point of view it does everything on the wrong way (I am a Visual Studio fan).
After I tried IDEA, I had to realize that it can be customized to act nearly the same as VS, so it IS a very good IDE.
And the version 12 has UI editor for Android.
I can say that try to compare their IntelliSense (or whatever you call it), the debugger (including watches) and the editor. Much more better, smarter, faster for a daily use.
IDEA ultimate is not free, but if you would like to make money with programming I think you can make it easier with professional tools.
I would never pay for Eclipse.
As a new IDEA user I found the IDE to be somewhat overwhelming at first. The IDE contains more options than I thought possible and can bring into question - "Just how many checkboxes can you fit on a screen". Once the shock passed and I was able to complete a small project, I'm in love. Sorry Eclipse, but you were kind of flakey and would have unpredictable behavior. IDEA is rock solid.
As a programmer I want rock solid tools and sometimes the phrase "you get what you pay for" is valid.
Google's Android Studio is built on top of IDEA, assuming that it will be the "Official" developer tool when it reaches 1.0, it might be worth getting up to speed by learning IDEA.
It also has a "dark" theme built in so you don't have to mess around with Eclipse plugins.
Quick comparison
between eclipse 4.3.2 and intellij 13.0.2:
I will refer to intellij idea as I as an abbreviation below (e.g. I12 means intellij idea version 12)
Both are fine .
Pro Intellij are:
Faster compiler mode:(introduced in I12) exactly as with eclipse, now Intellij compiles everything continuously in the background and shows you files that doesn't compile with red zigzag. Exactly as Eclipse but less heavier and more responsive .
Android UI editor: (introduced in I11) even better than the one in eclipse ADT plugin: it shows more properties as android:layout_span ,i.e. Advanced properties that are hidden in Eclipse UI editor forcing you to edit them from Layout XML , can be easily editted from Intellij UI editor. Also while Eclipse UI editor hangs when selecting multiple components then editting one common property , this is extremely fast and easy in Intellij UI editor. It also can show you a preview while editing XML code, which you can't do in eclipse.
Best content assist : it auto completes when you enter next limiter (space or semicolon or brackets or dot ) you don't have to press enter then press the next limiter, exactly as Visual Studio Intellisense. Also Intellij puts most relevant result on top. another feature introduced in I12 is that it searches if matches are available from the middle not from start.
Fast: intellij is much faster than Eclipse. Eclipse 3.8 is slow and Eclipse 4.2 is even slower due some bugs, that were fixed gradually in Eclipse 4.2.1 and 4.2.2 releases .
more stable than eclipse. In Eclipse, A row of Layout properties editor may stick on screen while you scroll, a very bad UI glitch. Also Eclipse x64 crashes very frequently as compared with eclipse x86 or Intellij, may be because of bugs in JDK x64.
Add framework support:( New in I13) a wizard to add framework support
As of intellij 13, it has wizard like (New->Android-> Android Activity) as that in eclipse adt plugin , maybe the only difference is the intellij wizard may force you to a higher minimum SDK version, while eclipse doesn't .
Con Intellij:
Gradle: Android project wizard: (New in I13) when you create an app you can define in a gui wizerd : min sdk , target sdk , icons and theme (all these fills in the gap between eclipse and previous Is) and support mode ( an advantage over eclipse). Although this might be considered an advantage, gradle added so many errors to managing an android project, that intellij became not usable as before in intellij 12. most errors require either changing configuration and updating a maven repo from internet , or navigating to a folder and running a command from terminal.
Doesn't support NDK (Native Development Kit for development in C/C++)
I have been using IDEA for professional Android development for almost a year, it is much better than Eclipse because:
The IDE is much faster and stable
Excellent interface designer
Other good enhancements such color picker in XML, creating resource directories and creating String resources.
IDEA is much better for Android development and you will increase your productivity for sure, Google knows this, that is why Android Studio is built on top of IDEA
I am in the process of putting together a little Android app. I have created a couple of widgets by extending the ImageView and ScrollView widgets. The problem that I am having is not with the code itself (i.e. everything runs wonderfully) but rather with the Eclipse "intellisense" in an XML layout. If I am using the native android widgets, I get the normal eclipse suggestions and all is well. However, as soon as I add a reference to my widget (i.e. ) I lose intellisense on my widget AND (more painfully) on all widgets below my widget. In other words, I don't get intellisense on a if it exists below my widget. Again....everything runs, there is no error anywhere, it just becomes insanely slow to program this way.
This is very frustrating as I don't remember all the attributes of the various controls.
Has anyone encountered this or have any suggestions on where to begin trying to solve this? I don't even know what the correct term in Eclipse to start looking at this. After 3 days looking off and on, I am at my wits end.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Try the new ADT 9.0.0 plugin. It has many improvements of the "visual editor". See the changelog here