Speeding the Android edit-debug cycle - android

Developing applications for Android in Eclipse, press F11 to run the program in the emulator.
However, this means waiting for the emulator to bootup (and then unlocking the emulator's screen) each time you want to test changes to your program. Is there any way around this delay?

OJW
Are you closing the emulator after you test the app?
If you leave it running and then start your application from Eclipse again it will re-deploy and start (and avoid the overhead of starting the emulator).
You can also stop the application from the emulator perspective in eclipse before re-starting it.
-- Frank

If you have a physical device, you can use it instead of the emulator, it's much faster.

Related

How to stop an Android emulator from Eclipse or Emulator button?

I just wonder how do I stop or exit Android emulator if I want to modify the source code and run again?
Do I just click on the emulator the "Power" button?
Restarting the emulator is the equivalent of rebooting a phone everytime you test something.
It takes a lot of time and it's completely unnecessary (unless you're testing something that happens during reboot). Just re-run the code, Eclipse and adb will do the rest. Keep the window of the emulator open all the time, it will just re-install the apk onto it.

Is my PC fault, or android emulator is slow

I'm on the learning stage of android and I have to run/debug my application in emulator very often. The thing is that between I press the debug button and until the application gets started on the emulator I have to wait 1-2 minutes.
Is this normal? My PC is a i5 with 8GB RAM.
The emulator is certainly not fast, but one thing you should do is to make sure you don't close the emulator. Leave it running, and then most of the initial startup time will be taken care of. The emulator is a real emulator (unlike the iOS simulator). Think of the startup time of the emulator as booting up your phone. You're not going to turn off and turn on your phone every time you want to use an app, so similarly with the emulator, just leave it on.
It’s not normal, but it’s as expected. The Android emulator continues to be very slow and basically unusable for development. You’re better off developing on a real device. (Deployment to real device is much faster with Android IDE than it is on Xcode/iOS.)
Google has stated that it is a known issue, but it’s not known if/when it actually will get fixed.
I have experienced startup times of 5-10 minutes for the emulator to start up. The startup time to start debugging your application is going to depend on the size of your application. It has to tranfser the .apk over each time you want to debug. If your application is full of large files this can be a long time. One time I put a video in my res/raw folder and it brought my application to 25 mb. This ended up taking around 5 minutes to start debugging.

Android Emulator boot

I'm starting android development from just three days, I have downloaded the SDK and install the platform and define the emulator, but it takes a lot of time to boot every time I run the application
Is there a way to run the emulator once and then run the application and to be updated on the emulator without closing it and re-opening it again
I'm using eclipse classic please any one try to help
Yes, just hit "Run" again, it will be reinstalled automatically if you changed code, otherwise you will see a message like "brought to front".
I recommend to not stop the emulator as long as you don't have to.
You don't need to close your emulator every time. Assuming you are using eclipse--> Right click on project-->Run-->Android application, if any changes, those will be deployed. Otherwise same screen will showup.
Yes. I usually just leave it open and launching the program from Eclipse updates the program in the emulator and launches it.
One weird thing is that the first time I launch it I get an error from Eclipse telling me that it has not been able to connect to the emulator, and the next time I launch the application a new emulator is launched. Usually I just close the first emulator, launch it again and then it works as it should.

Is there a easier way of running an android application using the eclipse emulator?

I am trying to write an android application and my workflow is as follows:
Write some code
Click run as Android Application
Eclipse then starts the android emulator
Install the app on the emulator
Run it
It seems to me that there is no need for it to start an android emulator(3) each time and to kill it. It'd be nice if there was a way an android emulator always running and eclipse just installs/uninstalls the app instead of making me wait every time.
Does anyone know a way of doing this?
Yeah, it just does that way - leave emulator on, and "run" in Eclipse will update the app and run it. This is how it works for me.
Just don't kill the emulator!

How long does the Android Emulator take to start? Do you need to close/start if every time you change Java code?

When developing for Android do you typically need to stop the emulator and restart it every time you make a change to your Java code or is there a faster way? The emulator takes about 1.5 minutes to start for me, is this normal?
Yes. Starting an emulator is slow, but you don't need to reboot it usually when you make changes. You can just target the already running emulator, at least in eclipse.
It is worthwhile to use the "Snapshot" functionality of the emulator. It can be enabled when you create (or you can edit) your AVD image.
This will take a "Snapshot" of the emulator image when you stop running. Then it restarts the emulator to that exact same place.
When using this feature, the emulator start-up time is sped up by a factor if 10+ (I see a 10 sec start-up compared to 90 sec to bring it up from scratch).
It is important to note, that this will maintain "state" of your emulator between runs. This can be useful if you are trying to test a particular scenario. It can be bad if you run your emulator out of memory, then "snapshot" that (at which point, you can always take a fresh snapshot, and start again).
The emulator take some time to start, depending on the running machine and the amount of programs you are running on the host.
If you installed the eclipse plugin, you don't need to restart the emulator each time: simply hit run in eclipse, and the plugin will take care of making the .apk package, put it in the device and start the activity (if any).
There is really no need to restart the emulator. You can keep it running all day (or longer). If you do not use eclipse: adb install -r will do the job (-r to replace the existing package) and restart your app.
Mine takes a minute + to start. I tried adding -no-boot-anim to speed it up, but the few tests I did it did not speed it up.
There is no need to close Android Emulator when you changes in code just simple do one thing
Leave AVD running and you will have to press F11 (or run your app), make sure you are at home screen of AVD.
To start the emulator in Eclipse, go to Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager, then select the virtual device you want and hit start. This way it will stay on and not shutdown when your app terminates.
I have noticed that sometimes I have to shut down the emulator and restart it. It appears to hang at "waiting for home to launch". This only hangs the first time. Once it successfully launches I can reinstall repeatedly with no issues.
Yes, as everyone said you don't have to restart the emulator. I'm not sure if it's my computer (obviously to some degree it would be) but even when I simply make a one line change and relaunch, eclipse/AVD take roughly 2-3 minutes to fully load my new package to the emulator. Sucks having to wait this long between changes, but it also makes you want to write better code the first time rather than being sloppy and just test the results.

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