MOTODEV Studio for Android Blog articles

MOTODEV Studio 3.1 now available

EricC — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:47:16 GMT

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope the holidays were good for everyone. I took some time away from work and cleaned out 10 years of accumulated boxes from our garage. I also ran Ethernet cable through the attic to my kids’ rooms for their computers and the Xbox. So, I earned points with everyone in the house.

I used my “bonus time” for several days to write an app for my DROID RAZR. As odd as it may seem, I don’t get to write a lot of code. The chance to sit down and design again is actually a joy. I can’t tell you how excited I was to look up one of those nights and see that it was 2 a.m. It’s been several years since I’ve done that. My app isn’t ready to unveil, but this has been a great experience as both a developer and as a product manager.

Most of the time, when I demo MOTODEV Studio or the App Validator, it’s in short stretches for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. During the holiday break, I used MOTODEV Studio 3.1 and App Validator for 3 days and I took copious notes. I love hearing from users about how they love our tools, but I also like hearing how we can do better. In the case of my own development, I loved the wizards for creating activities and the string editor. We’re starting our next wave of development and my ideas as well as yours are crucial to making a great experience for all Android developers.

Installers Available

As I mentioned in mid-December, we made MOTODEV Studio 3.1 available as an online update. I’m now happy to announce that the installer packages are available for download at the MOTODEV site. In my previous post, I mentioned that this package contains the latest Google ADT plugins (version 16.0.1). Some highlights of this new release are

The Localization Files Editor automatic translation feature now supports the Google Translate v2 API
Generated database classes now follow the Java naming standards
Automatic generation of code that saves and restores the app state
New code snippets, including some for the new Ice Cream Sandwich SDK, such as Finding Faces

Find Faces code snippet in MOTODEV Studio 3.1

These things are in addition to many bug fixes that we’ve made in the product--bug fixes we’ve made in open source components and updates to open source components from Eclipse. Overall it’s another stable release and I didn’t have any problems with it for my own development, plus the hundreds of man hours of testing that went in before it was released.

There’s a New Kid in Town

For the past 18 months, we’ve talked about the MOTODEV App Validator and it’s been a vital part of MOTODEV Studio. With this release, we’re now providing another way to download and install the tool. App Validator is now available as a separate download from the tools download page (scroll down a bit).

Developers who want to test their apps but don’t want to use MOTODEV Studio are encouraged to download this free command-line tool. Installation is a matter of simply extracting the archive wherever you want the tool to run, preferably somewhere on your $PATH. The tool starts from a batch file or shell script called ‘appvalidator’ and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Support is available on our discussion boards, the same as for MOTODEV Studio.

Farewell (features)

Every release means evaluating requirements and determining what makes sense to support. This release was no different.

Two years ago, we started a project of translating our products to Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese. We went so far as to translate some of our open-source pieces as well. It was a fun project, but it is a lot of work to manage the changes of string resources between versions. While it would be nice to have translators work using the same Agile methods and tools that our developers do, the truth is they don’t and probably won’t for many years. So, we’ve removed the translations from MOTODEV Studio and the language packs from the download pages.

In our Download Components screen, we’ve removed the tool that allowed users to download SDK addons (emulator images) via MOTODEV Studio. This is because developers can download these files via our web site and the Google SDK manager provides this function now. We’ve submitted our link to Google and as soon as it’s approved and activated, you will be able to download Motorola addons directly from the SDK Manager.

Finally, as for host OS support, not a lot changed. We always evaluate where we stand and I’m seeing a lot more users switching to 64-bit this last quarter. Linux developers are picking up, but the thing to point out is that we test on Ubuntu and Fedora using VirtualBox. If you have your own favorite combination (and most Linux users do), please help us by trying to eliminate as many variables as possible.

To 2012 (and beyond)

Once again, I’d like to thank everyone for their support and feedback of MOTODEV Studio and our tools in 2011. We look forward to working with you again in 2012.

Eric

MOTODEV Studio 3.1.0 Update Site Available

EricC — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:11:03 GMT

Happy Solstice everyone (Winter and Summer)!

The MOTODEV tools team has a present for all you good Android developers. Fresh from the oven (or off the barbeque for our antipodean friends) is a fresh release of MOTODEV Studio.

In this release, we've added several new items:

Support for the ADT plugins (version 16.0.1) that were released last Friday
The automatic translation feature now supports the Google Translate v2 API
Generated database classes now follow the Java naming standards
Automatic generation of code that saves and restores the app state
New code snippets

We're doing this release today in a restricted manner (as an update only) because the holidays are upon us. Many of the MOTODEV team members will be on holiday beginning this Friday and at different times through the next 12 days. While we will be monitoring the discussion boards, we won't be back to our full staff level until January 3rd. We're confident that MOTODEV Studio 3.1 will be fine, but we won't be as quick to answer questions as we would be at other times of the year.

Most users should continue to use Studio 3.0.x until after the New Year. Users who want access to the latest plugins, including ADT 16, the way to access this release is via the MOTODEV menu. Choose MOTODEV -> Update MOTODEV Studio as shown below.

We'll have the standalone installers and a plugin archive ready to go when we return from the break. We also have something new that I think you'll enjoy.

On behalf of the MOTODEV tools team, I would like to thank you all for downloading and using MOTODEV Studio this year. We've had a lot of great feedback from everyone and we've enjoyed working with you.

Best wishes for joyful New Year and a prosperous and happy 2012.

Eric

MOTODEV Studio 3.0.2 update is now available

EricC — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:59:36 GMT

Hello Everyone!

This is just a quick post to let you know that we’ve released MOTODEV Studio 3.0.2 as an update. This update is available by going to the MOTODEV menu and selecting “Update MOTODEV Studio”.

This update brings in a several bug fixes to the App Validator that we found as a result of testing with Android SDK version 15. It also brings in the official ADT 15 plugins from Google. If you’ve already manually integrated ADT 15 yourself, then you are fine with the tools you have, unless you want the bug fixes to the App Validator.

If you are updating from MOTODEV Studio 3.0.0 or earlier, you will want to simultaneously update your Android SDK to version 15. Because the version of ADT that is included with this update is intended to work with SDK version 15, you will start to get compile errors in your projects if you update them out of step with each other.

You might’ve seen some of my posts on our discussion boards or links to articles at the Android developer site on changes to the tools for Ice Cream Sandwich. If you’ve been using R.constant values in your projects in switch statements, you will need to spend some time refactoring those into if-else blocks before moving to SDK 15.

Other than the R.constant issue, there should be no major changes to MOTODEV Studio 3.0.0 users with this release. In fact, with the ADT 15 release, it appears that Google has fixed quite a few usability problems that were reported in ADT 14.

Thanks you for using MOTODEV Studio!

Eric

Announcing the MOTODEV App Validator SDK Beta

EricC — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:38:27 GMT

Hello everyone,

App quality is the result of many diligent practices, one of which is testing. I hope our users have taken advantage of the MOTODEV App Validator. If not, I understand. Perhaps we’ve made it difficult to see, use, or understand. We’re working to fix that and you will see improvements to usability in the future as well as training on how to use the tool inside MOTODEV Studio and on the command line.

The App Validator is more than just a testing tool, though. When we first created it, we knew that Android would be rapidly evolving the way it is now and we knew there would be many new conditions that would arise that needed to be detected. When new OS releases appear, we can write new checkers for the App Validator in about three days because the checkers use the same underlying technology that Eclipse plugins use.

Today, I’m pleased to announce the App Validator Beta SDK. With Eclipse Classic, the Android Development Tools (ADT), and this SDK, you can write your own extensions to the MOTODEV App Validator to check Android applications. The App Validator framework provides the ability to decompose the Android app, enumerate resources, pull apart the app manifest, decompile Java code, and publish reports. Your plugin provides the specific business logic to detect the condition and raises exceptions. The framework handles the rest.

The App Validator runs as a command line tool as well as embedded into the IDE, so an extension built with this SDK will run in both environments. I suspect that most developers who create extensions will insert the tool into their build scripts as a last check before shipping, but I would love to see innovative and crazy things done that I didn’t think of.

These are just some of the things you might do with the App Validator SDK:

Create a plugin to ensure that all the apps you build contain copyright strings in the exact format required by your company’s Legal department (release engineering)
Scan an app to ensure that there are no calls to forbidden or dangerous APIs (IT department “blessing”)
Ensure that small, medium, large, and extra-large layouts exist for every layout that ships or some subset based on rules (design team)

The skills needed to use this SDK are not only Java, but also Eclipse plugin development. The learning curve for Eclipse, just like any robust API set, is rather steep. The good news is that finding skilled Eclipse developers isn’t terribly difficult. The installation guide, Javadocs, and the install .jar file are all available at the MOTODEV Tools and Libraries site. There are two sample plugins that are installed with the the .jar file that you can use to start your own development. The installation experience is typical for Eclipse users and is explained in detail in the install guide.

The SDK is in beta form. We intend to spend some time taking feedback on our discussion boards, so if you use it, please let us know what we can improve in terms of the APIs, the API documentation, the user documentation, and the overall user experience.

Thanks again for using MOTODEV and good luck with your development!

Eric

Announcing the updated MOTODEV App Validator

EricC — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:15:08 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I hope you've had a chance to download and try out MOTODEV Studio 3.0. We've made many improvements to the tools in this release, including the App Validator tool that is integrated into the IDE. Today, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve made those changes available to the online version of the App Validator as well.

If you aren’t aware of this feature of the MOTODEV web site, you should be. The MOTODEV App Validator is a static analysis tool that inspects your Android applications (.apk files) and reports on many different potential problems. Even if you don’t use MOTODEV Studio, you should be taking advantage of this tool.

Here are just a few of the conditions the App Validator can detect:

Invalid signing certificate dates
Not enough permissions in the manifest for the APIs being called
Missing values in translated strings.xml files
Missing drawables for different densities that can lead to Force Close runtime errors
Missing or incorrect layouts for the various screen sizes
Failure to properly close database “cursors”
Compatibility issues for specific Motorola devices

A full list can be found in this online document.

Start by browsing to http://developer.motorola.com/testing/app-validator/. You will see a screen similar to the one shown below. We’ve tested this feature with many browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera support the drag and drop feature in their most recent releases. Internet Explorer, unfortunately, does not. IE users will need to press the “Browse” button on the screen and locate the file with an Open File dialog.

The new online version now gives you the ability to configure settings in a way that is similar to the version in MOTODEV Studio. Many of the command line switches that make the stand-alone tool so powerful are now available in the online tool. By clicking “edit” (next to “Settings”), you are presented with the following screen that allows you to configure the settings that best suit your needs.

From this screen, you can choose which checkers you wish to run. For example, if you don’t want to see messages about missing strings, you can clear the checkbox for “Localization Strings Checker”. If you only want to test the permissions for your app, clear all but the “Permissions Checker”.

In a similar manner, you can choose which devices your app is compared against. For these tests, the validator isn’t executed on the devices, but rather the values found in the manifest and layouts are compared against values for specific Motorola devices or classes of devices, such as those with Extra Large Screen Sizes.

When you’re ready to perform the test, you can click “Close” to save the settings for the current session. If you choose “Make My Defaults”, the choices are saved as a cookie on your computer. The “Restore Factory Defaults” button returns every checkbox to their default state.

When you are ready to test, just drag and drop your .apk files onto the web form. After a few seconds, you will see the results appear, similar to those shown below.

The results show up, as before, in a list at the bottom of the page. We limit the size of the output to 10,000 results to keep bandwidth down. If you want to clear the results of the process and test new apps, the “Clear Results” button will delete all the errors and allow you to continue testing files without reloading the page.

We’ve tried to make the online App Validator as useful as possible for developers while making it easy to understand and use. We hope you find this a benefit of your MOTODEV membership and use the results you find to make positive changes to your own offerings.

We have more changes in the works for both the stand-alone and online App Validator. If you are attending the O’Reilly Android Open conference in October, stop by Ballroom B on Tuesday at 2:00pm for more insight into this powerful tool.

Thank you for being a MOTODEV member!

Eric

Announcing MOTODEV Studio 3.0

EricC — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:30:22 GMT

Hello everyone!

It’s my pleasure to announce that MOTODEV Studio 3.0 is now available for download. This update brings in Eclipse 3.7 (aka “Indigo”) and the “tools_r12” version of the ADT plugins.

MOTODEV Studio 3.0 supports Android SDK version 12. We initially planned to release Studio 3.0 after the Android SDK tools_r13 package was released. The recent kernel.org hack attack has had a ripple effect on projects stored there. We anticipated that tools_r13 would be released by now, but it hasn't due to those attacks. We've tested Studio with both the current r12 tools and the tools_r13 branch on kernel.org. For now, work with the current r12 tools with confidence. We will continue to test with tools_r13 on kernel.org. When those tools are released we will ensure that Studio works properly.

We’ve made quite a few changes and have some exciting new features in MOTODEV Studio 3.0. There are also some changes to the way some Studio features work and—we will go through those in this posting. If you need more detail on what’s changed, a great source of information is the MOTODEV Studio release notes and the Installation Guide.

Updates

Over the last year, we’ve worked to improve our update mechanisms. If you want to update MOTODEV Studio 2.x to 3.0, you need only go to the MOTODEV menu and choose “Update MOTODEV Studio”. This operation uses the Eclipse mechanism to connect to the MOTODEV update server. Instead of looking all over the Internet for different update packages, the MOTODEV site has all the packages you need in one place.

If you want to make a clean start with Studio 3.0, you can download the full installer package. If you are a “power user” and already use Eclipse for desktop or server development, you can install MOTODEV Studio as plugins into your existing Eclipse Indigo environment. Both of these options are available from our downloads page.

Regardless of which way you install, you will get the latest Eclipse platform release, the most recent Android ADT plugins, and the many features that MOTODEV Studio provides.

Themes

With every release, the Studio development team and I look for areas to improve. Rather than adding features haphazardly, we like to focus on what we consider “pain points” and see how we can make developers’ lives easier.

Plugin maintenance

One of the themes of every release is updating to the latest Eclipse platform and Android plugins. For Eclipse, it’s a simple matter as the release schedules are published well in advance. The Android plugins aren’t on such a schedule, so there are times when we wake up one morning and notice there are new plugins available. Usually we see this coming as the Android tools team works in the open and their repo is visible at kernel.org.

On a similar vein, we’ve previously announced that we are deprecating our support for 32-bit MacOS systems. This policy takes effect as of this release. Users of 32-bit Macs should continue to use MOTODEV Studio 2.2.2 with the r12 Android SDK for as long as they can. While we haven’t done anything in the plugin archive to prevent users from installing the plugins on 32-bit Macs, we will no longer be testing these configurations or answering support issues involving them.

Feature Discovery

A major theme of the current release was to make things easier to find. We’ve added a lot of functionality the last 2 ½ years and sometimes people are surprised by the appearance of a feature. So, we’ve re-ordered our menus, cleaned up the toolbar, and added more context menu shortcuts.

The most noticeable change in this “discovery” theme is the addition of a new “Videos View”. In addition to creating new features, we’ve added the ability to view YouTube videos from our playlists within the IDE. We’re planning to add a series of videos on using the tools and developing for Android.

No Boring Code

In earlier releases we added the “Code Snippets” view and the ability to generate adapters based on the fields of a database. Now comes a big feature that I know is going to make lot of developers happy. In Studio 3.0, you can now generate a lot of Activity code based on a designed layout. Not only that, you can modify the layouts and re-generate the code without destroying what has already been done. So now, instead of writing all those adapters to toggle a variable when a checkbox is pressed, just design your layout, generate the code, and enter your business logic.

We are working on a video to show this feature in action. In the mean time, give it a try with a blank project and see how it works for you. We're planning to add more functionality to this feature during the next release cycle, so any suggestions on ways to improve its' behavior are appreciated.

Emulator Improvements

We wanted to improve the workflows around running and debugging applications, so we’ve added several features here. The first one improves your ability to install applications: just drag and drop your .apk files onto an item in the Device Management view to start the install process. You can drag from the Eclipse Project Explorer view or from your computers’ desktop manager.

How many times have you gone to launch your app and end up starting an emulator by mistake? Even though you have an emulator running, the launch configuration may be pointing to a different AVD. MOTODEV Studio now checks when you’re launching an Android app to see if there are any compatible AVDs already running. If there are, it asks whether it should use a running instance rather than starting a new one. I’m guessing, based on our experience, this is what developers want about 90% of the time.

App Validator

The App Validator is a part of MOTODEV Studio, but it’s also its own tool. We integrate the tool into the IDE and ship it as part of the product. For this release, we’ve added new checkers that will notify you if you are requesting too many permissions, are missing declarations for large screens, and if you are repeating resource IDs across different files.

In App Validator 0.8, we added the ability to decompile the unobfuscated Java code in your .apk files. We used this information to determine if you were missing permissions and several other features. Now, we’re using this information to look for possible programming mistakes. App Validator 0.9 scans code looking for API calls that cause database cursors to open. It then looks for subsequent calls to close the cursor. If none are found (or it appears that the number of closes is less than the number of opens), you will receive a warning. This is an early feature, so treat the results with some skepticism.

Grab Bag

Themes are a nice tool for project planning, but there are always some features that defy having a specific theme. That doesn’t mean they don’t have value and shouldn’t be included, but these things tend to have less of an impact.

For example, we’ve improved the preference page for the App Validator. In previous releases, users were forced to know the command line switches for a particular function. Now the App Validator has a nice GUI preference page.

Developers who use the database feature a lot should try out the updated database creation wizard. Now, you can create databases and tables from the same dialog and bind them to your Android app using the code generation wizard. If you use databases in your app, you will find this to be a huge time-saver.

The Long and Winding Road

The road ahead looks to be interesting. Ice Cream Sandwich will be making an appearance soon, and the work of the GoogleTV team is available for the adventurous. The MOTODEV Studio team is starting to plan our next release and our activities for 2012. While we don’t know what the future holds for all things Android, we can at least put down a bit of a roadmap.

To start, we’ve contributed a new feature to Android SDK tools. This change will allow developers to discover Motorola SDK add-ons (emulator images) from the SDK and AVD Manager. This has been a feature of MOTODEV Studio, but once the ability for the SDK and AVD Manager to work with the MOTODEV site is available in the SDK tools, we will start phasing it out of MOTODEV Studio.

There’s also some new NDK (Native Development Kit) changes in store for Eclipse users. Doug Schaefer from Wind River contributed code to the AOSP for handling C/C++ projects in a nice way. Doug previously contributed code for C++ support to the Eclipse Sequoyah project and he’s improved it significantly for the AOSP.

We hope that both of these features will be in the “tools_r14” branch that could be out in early October. We usually don’t know about these things until we see the stabilization branch occur in the git repo. We know we will have to update MOTODEV Studio to version 3.0.1 to work with the new plug-ins, so expect to see an update release shortly after the “r14” plug-ins and SDK are released.

We’re beginning to start some investigation into features for 3.1. As always, if you have an idea for a workflow improvement or even something bigger, just drop us a note on the MOTODEV Studio discussion boards. We’re always on the lookout for new ideas that will make your lives easier.

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio!

Eric

MOTODEV Studio for Android 2.2.1 Update available

EricC — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:52:25 GMT

Hello MOTODEV Studio users,

A new version of MOTODEV Studio for Android became available on June 15, 2011. This update includes version 11 of the Google ADT plugins, which had some API changes that affected MOTODEV Studio. It also adds support for new Google Translate API policies that affect the Localization Files Editor.

A longer description of the update and how to install it is available on the MOTODEV discussion boards at http://community.developer.motorola.com/t5/MOTODEV-Studio-for-Android/Announcing-MOTODEV-Studio-update-version-2-2-1/td-p/15868

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio for Android.

Eric

MOTODEV Studio localization feature and the Google Translate APIs

EricC — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:11:18 GMT

Hello everyone,

Earlier this week, Google announced that they were deprecating the Google Translate APIs, effective immediately. I want to take a moment to explain what this means to MOTODEV Studio users. Click this link to follow the discussion at the MOTODEV Studio discussion boards.

Thanks (again) for using MOTODEV Studio.

Eric

Announcing MOTODEV Studio version 2.2

EricC — Mon, 09 May 2011 23:07:04 GMT

Hello Everyone!

Today we’re announcing the availability of MOTODEV Studio version 2.2 and an update of the MOTODEV App Validator (including the web version). More details on the release can be found in an article on the MOTODEV blog. If you run into any problems downloading, updating, or installing this new release, just post to this thread in the discussion boards. If you run into new problems or have questions, feel free to start a new thread.

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio.

-E

MOTODEV App Validator and Motorola XOOM

EricC — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:29:16 GMT

Hello everyone!

I'm excited. I mean I'm Excited!

It's springtime in North America and it's beginning to show. I've got robins and wrens in the birdbath outside my office. I've even got Cardinals, and Bluejays, and Orioles. (Oh My!) I have them on my Motorola XOOM as well. With the Major League Baseball™ app. And that makes me really, really happy.

One of the drawbacks of traveling so much is that I'm never completely certain what time zone I'm in. When I visit the Mother Ship in California, I always miss the early east coast games. And when I'm visiting the MOTODEV Studio team in Brazil, I don't get to follow my team at all (go Rockies!). It's rough being a baseball fan in a fútbol (or F1 racing) country. Which is why my XOOM and the MLB app make a perfect pair.

I'm convinced that Android tablets will conquer the world. I've been carrying a XOOM for a couple months and we're inseparable. I wake to it's soothing glow in the morning and catch the morning news with a cup of coffee. During the day, it chimes at me when tasks are due in Remember the Milk. It's by my side in the evening when we're watching TV. For bedtime reading, I'm currently devouring Stephen King's Dark Tower series as e-books. The Honeycomb e-book app puts my dedicated e-book reader to shame. I'm not quite ready to give up my laptop, but I see the day where I will be using nothing but a mobile phone and a tablet when I'm traveling. The rest of the world will follow our lead.

As a developer, you want your app to be available for these devices. If you don't have access to a tablet, how will you know if it works or not? By now, you've certainly downloaded the Honeycomb SDK and may have used the Android emulator. That will tell you that the code executes, but will it be visible in the market? You could register for one of our upcoming MOTODEV App Summits and try it out, firsthand. That's definitely a good idea, but that doesn't work for everyone.

Well, you've stuck with me this far, so I'll let the cat out of the bag. Today (Friday, April 8), we're releasing a new version of the MOTODEV App Validator. This is an updated version of the online tool we debuted last month on the MOTODEV web site. With this new version of the App Validator, we look at your manifest to make sure you aren't using any features or implied features (via permissions) that might prevent your app from being seen in the Android Market for XOOM users.

Huh?

When you create an Android app, you have to specify certain information about the app in its manifest file. There are sections for features, which explain what hardware or platform features you are using. Some of these features you specify directly, but others are implied by the permissions you request. If you explicitly or implicitly request a feature that doesn't exist for a tablet (such as SMS), then your app is filtered for those devices that don't support it (such as SMS on the XOOM). There are other features that cause market filtering and this test is available for all our devices, not just the XOOM.

If you want a quick way to tell if your app might be filtered, give our latest version of the online app validator a try. Just drag and drop your APK file onto the web browser and you'll have the results in a few seconds. Here's an example of what you might see if you are using SMS in your app...

We're rolling this same functionality into the standalone (desktop) version of App Validator that ships with MOTODEV Studio. I expect that version to be available soon, so check the MOTODEV Studio blog often or subscribe to the MOTODEV Studio RSS feed for immediate notification of news about our award-winning tools.

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio and the MOTODEV App Validator.

Eric

MOTODEV Studio and Android ADT plugins version 10.0.1

EricC — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:08:41 GMT

Hello everyone,

This week, Google released ADT plugins version 10.0.1, which have some bug fixes in them. We've tested these plugins with MOTODEV Studio 2.1.1 and found them to work without problems. Details on how to update MOTODEV Studio can be found out our discussion boards at http://community.developer.motorola.com/t5/MOTODEV-Studio-for-Android/MOTODEV-Studio-and-Android-ADT-plugins-version-10-0-1/td-p/12912

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio.

Eric

Introducing the MOTODEV App Validator

EricC — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:04:35 GMT

The MOTODEV App Validator is a new tool from Motorola that's available with MOTODEV Studio. The App Validator examines apps for problems and lets you know about them before they become problems for your customers. Learn more about this free benefit of being a MOTODEV member by clicking here...

MOTODEV Studio for Android 2.1.1 Update available

EricC — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:37:05 GMT

Hello MOTODEV Studio users,

A new version of MOTODEV Studio for Android became available on Monday, February 28, 2011. This update provides support for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) SDK and includes version 10 of the Google ADT plugins.

A longer description of the update and how to install it is available on the MOTODEV discussion boards at http://community.developer.motorola.com/t5/MOTODEV-Studio-for-Android/ANN-MOTODEV-Studio-2-1-1-is-available-Now-with-Honeycomb/td-p/12218

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio for Android.

Eric Cloninger

Product Line Manager

Motorola Mobility, Inc.

Honeycomb SDK 3.0 (Final) and ADT 10

EricC — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:14:44 GMT

Hello everyone,

On February 22, Google released the final Honeycomb 3.0 SDK along with new ADT plugins for Eclipse. We've tested these items and they appear to work correctly. News about the changes and instructions on how to work with them are in this thread at the MOTODEV Studio discussion boards.

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio.

Eric

A note on Android SDK 2.3.3 (API level 10)

EricC — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 02:35:53 GMT

Google released a new version of their SDK today for API level 10, targeting platform 2.3.3 (Gingerbread). There is a thread covering the topic at the MOTODEV discussion boards.

http://community.developer.motorola.com/t5/MOTODEV-Studio-for-Android/Android-SDK-2-3-3-with-API-level-10-is-released/td-p/11620

ANN: MOTODEV Studio 2.1 is now available

EricC — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:09:39 GMT

Hello Everyone!

A new version of MOTODEV Studio for Android was released on 28 January 2011. This new release provides support for the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) SDK and the Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) Preview SDK. MOTODEV Studio 2.1 ships with ADT plugins version 9, which have been renumbered by Google since the last major release.

A description of the release with a list of new features is available on the MOTODEV discussion boards. If you are planning to develop apps for the Honeycomb Preview SDK, please spend a few moments reading the known issues in the release notes. The installers are available at the MOTODEV Studio downloads page and you can update an existing version of MOTODEV Studio using the "Check for Updates" from the Help menu.

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio for Android.

Eric Cloninger

Product Line Manager

MOTODEV Studio, Your Way (A Tu Manera, Do Seu Jeito, 您喜欢的方式)

EricC — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:56:02 GMT

Did you know that MOTODEV Studio works in languages other than English? With only a few quick keystrokes, you can use your favorite development environment in Spanish, Portuguese, or Chinese.

ANN: MOTODEV Studio 2.0.1 update and installers now available

EricC — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:23:32 GMT

Hello everyone,

We hope 2010 has been a very good year for you. 2011 certainly looks to be very interesting for Android developers and we’re excited to be bringing you new tools.

Google released the Gingerbread SDK on Dec. 6 along with a new set of Eclipse plugins (ADT). We’ve been working to release a MOTODEV Studio update that will work with that combination. The testing took longer than we thought because ADT must be updated at the same time as the SDK. In previous releases, some combinations of ADT and SDK would work, but not this time. You must use ADT 8.0 (or later) with the Gingerbread SDK. That is the only allowed combination.

Normally, we would dedicate a full release cycle to getting this much functionality out to users, but we know that everyone is excited to start developing with Gingerbread. So, please read this post carefully and let it help guide you to the new tools.

Irrational Numbers

There are several version numbers that you need to be aware of.

SDK Tools: These are the compiler, post-linker, and debug support tools that get released at The Android Developer site. These are usually labeled r<X, where X is an integer. The tools are often released at the same time as a platform SDK, but not always. The current release of tools, released with Gingerbread, is r8.

ADT: Previously, the Google ADT plugins for Eclipse had version numbers such as 0.94, 0.98, etc. With this release, Google is versioning the plugins the same as the tools release. So the new versions of ADT will have numbers of 8.0, 8.0.1, 9.0 etc. The current official version of ADT is 8.0.1. This is what you should be using for your development. There is an expirmental version of ADT 9.0 available, but we have not yet tested it for use with MOTODEV Studio.

Platform SDK: This package contains the libraries used by the version of the OS that your are targeting. The Gingerbread platform version is 2.3, Froyo is 2.2, etc. You can have multiple versions of the platform inside your SDK installation and you can have different apps targeting different versions of the platform using the same version of the tools. This is by design and that's a Good Thing.

MOTODEV Studio: MOTODEV Studio 2.0.0 uses ADT 0.99 and SDK tools r7 to build apps for Froyo (Platform 2.2) and earlier. MOTODEV Studio 2.0.1 is the subject of this release and it uses ADT 8.0.1 and SDK tools r8 to build apps for Gingerbread (Platform 2.3) and earlier. MOTODEV Studio 2.1 is in development and should be released in January 2011.

Preliminary

For this update, I’m going to advise that you use the Google SDK download tool. Install the SDK tools and platforms in a separate location from your existing SDK and tools. Keep the Froyo SDK and tools around until you are certain that the Gingerbread tools are working. Especially if you have AVDs (emulator images) with a lot of effort in them. You can get the SDK download tool from the Android developer site.

We didn’t find any problems with workspaces. But, it’s never a bad practice to back up your code and workspace periodically.

If you aren’t taking advantage of specific functionality in Gingerbread, you can hold off with this release until MOTODEV Studio 2.1 is available next month. There are a lot of changes taking place with the SDK and platform tools and these will all get integrated into MOTODEV Studio 2.1 as a single package.

The Big Easy

The easiest way to get MOTODEV Studio 2.0.1 is to just download the full 2.0.1 installer from the MOTODEV Studio page. Just uninstall version 2.0.0 and reinstall version 2.0.1. After the download is completed, this takes about 5 minutes. After which you will be up to your elbows in Gingerbread.

The not-quite-so Big Easy

You can update MOTODEV Studio to version 2.0.1 using the online updater. It’s easy to invoke, just choose Check for Updates from the Help menu and follow the instructions.

This is where our testing problems occur--mostly due to network timeouts. Because updates are coming from 3 different sources (Motorola, Google, and Eclipse.org), the problems could be at any of these places or any place between your computer and those sites. The network problems have been sporadic and we don’t have a conclusive thing to point at as the source of all the problems.

Minimally, this process will take about 10 minutes. Even on a good network connection.

If you get errors with the update mechanism, the workaround that we were able to isolate was:

Go into the preferences panel
Choose Install/Update
Choose Available Software sites
From the list of sites, sort by location
Delete or disable any locations that aren’t using HTTPS as the protocol
Leave the preferences
Go back to Check for Updates from the Help menu and follow the instructions
After the process is completed successfully, you will be instructed to restart MOTODEV Studio.

Download and install the full install package mentioned above in The Big Easy.

If this still does not work for you, go back to the Available Software Sites and choose each of the HTTPS connections and press the Reload button.

The other not-quite-so Big Easy

If you want to avoid possible network problems with the update site, then you can choose to update MOTODEV Studio using a single archive file. This archive is 125MB and can be found on the download site (under Eclipse Plug-in Version; ignore the bit about Requires an existing Eclipse environment). Locate the link for Eclipse Helios and download the file to your computer.

To install the 2.0.1 update from this file:

Go into the preferences panel
Choose Install/Update
Choose Available Software sites
Make sure that none of the update sites have a checkbox next to their name
Press the Add button
Give the new update site a name, such as MDS201
Press the Archive button
Use the file navigation dialog to find the .zip file that you just downloaded
Press OK
Exit the preferences panel
Go to Check for updates from the Help menu
There should be a total of 6 packages to update. 3 are labeled MOTODEV Studio and 3 are labeled Sequoyah. You want all of these updated.
Press Next several times to get through the installer. You will be prompted about installing unsigned content. These warnings are a result of the Google plugins, which we have no control over. If you trust these plugins, choose Accept.
After a few moments, the process is completed and you will be instructed to restart MOTODEV Studio.

Almost Home

At this point, you will need to switch the SDK from R7 (Froyo) to R8 (Gingerbread). Both MOTODEV Studio and the Google plugins recognize this is a problem and will put up dialog boxes. Using the MOTODEV Studio dialog, locate the new SDK and choose it. Dismiss both dialogs with OK.

After a few seconds, you should be in MOTODEV Studio 2.0.1. To verify that everything worked, simply choose Help->About MOTODEV Studio for Android. The about box should clearly show the version number.

You’re done! Now, get out there and write some awesome apps!

If the updates still do not work, please choose Help->Collect Log Files. Then, let us know on the MOTODEV Studio Discussion Boards.

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio.

Eric

Notice about Android SDK 2.3

EricC — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:14:22 GMT

Hello Everyone,

Today, Google released SDK 2.3 which provides support for Gingerbread. Information about support for this SDK is described on the MOTODEV Studio discussion boards. Stay tuned to the MOTODEV Studio Blog RSS feed for more details.

http://community.developer.motorola.com/t5/MOTODEV-Studio-for-Android/Notice-about-Android-SDK-2-3/td-p/9902

Thank you for using MOTODEV Studio.

Eric

Get to the bottom of memory errors with MOTODEV Studio

EricC — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:08:48 GMT

3 December 2010 - Our blog hosting software is having problems with the image links in this article. We've submitted a bug report to have it resolved. Apologies for the problems. Eric

Episode IV - A New Hope

One of the promises of Java, circa 1996, was that memory problems would be solved by a garbage collector that was smarter than we were. While garbage collection does solve many of the problems that made our lives more difficult, it's no silver bullet that slays the beast. Memory problems still exist and the opaque nature of Java memory actually makes the debugging process more difficult. MOTODEV Studio helps alleviate some of this difficulty by including a common memory analysis tool called MAT.

MAT, or the "Memory Analyzer Tool", is an Eclipse project that was developed in open-source by committers from IBM and SAP. MAT reads the output of the Java standard HPROF command and displays the results in a manner that can be interpreted by humans.

The MOTODEV Studio team made some adjustments to MAT to make it easier for Android developers to use, but most of this functionality comes from the existing MAT plugins or Google's ADT plugin. The MAT wiki has some basic FAQs, but the best article I've found on how to review and understand the results is available on SAP's web site.

Start at the start

The following steps describe one way to perform this task. There are many ways to get work done with Eclipse, so if this doesn't match your own workflow, you should be able to adapt these instructions to meet your needs. I suggest you run through these instructions once with your app at a stable state such as in the main activity. Read the results and try to gain an understanding of what objects are created by the OS and base classes. HPROF generates so much information that you need to learn the skill of spotting the needle in the haystack. Otherwise you could waste time looking at results that aren't particularly interesting or useful. Keep in mind that HPROF takes a snapshot of the current conditions and doesn't monitor the execution over time, you may need to run \ these steps multiple times to identify problems that arise.

Launch an Android Virtual Device (AVD) using the MOTODEV Studio Device Management view, shown below. You can use MAT and MOTODEV Studio with an emulator or a real device, but if you are using your personal phone for debugging, you should always make sure you have your data backed up. From this point on, I will use the term "device", which could be either a physical handset or an emulator.
Right click on the project containing your app in the Package Explorer and choose Run As->Android Application using MOTODEV Studio. This step copies your app to the device and launches it.
Exercise the UI on your app to the point where you suspect the leaks are occurring. Remember the snapshot nature of HPROF, so you want to collect the data as close as you can to the problem spot.
Switch to the Device Management view, right click on the device that you are testing, and choose Analyze Memory with MAT as shown below
Next, select the app that you wish to observe and press Finish
At this point, HPROF goes off and performs its analysis. This process will take about 15 seconds, depending on the speed of the computer and the load on the device. While you could put this dialog in the background, it will probably be finished before you have an opportunity to do so.
When HPROF is complete, it transfers a file to your computer. This file is stored in the directory referenced by the TEMP environment variable. After it is stored, you will be shown the dialog below, asking how to process the results. Since we're interested in finding leaks, choose the first option.
The chart shown below is an example of what you will see from MAT. It has identifies several likely culprits as causing the leaks we see. The chart has links that allow you to drill deeper into each of the problem areas and allow you to explore individual data elements.

As I mentioned at the outset, there will be some false positives in the results and it helps to know which ones are caused by the framework and which come from your code. In my case, the problem was actually the second candidate, as shown below.
There are ways to drill down into the results and actually see the contents of the memory that was allocated. From the toolbar at the top of the MAT results, click on the far-right icon, with a picture of an Android on it. This will filter the results for your application and allow you to inspect the memory in more detail.
If you find you want to go over the results of a previous execution, you can do so at any time. Just use File->Open to locate and open the file with the .hprof suffix in your TEMP folder. This will cause the analyzer to run again with the results that you previously captured.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (and the Workaround)

As useful as HPROF and MAT are, this is an inexact method. HPROF only works at a specific moment in time, not across the lifetime of your application. You could run HPROF twice in quick succession and get wildly different results. The randomness of the Garbage Collector makes finding the moment where problems crop up to be non-deterministic. One trick I've seen developers use is to put sleep() statements into the code at specific points. Once they hit the sleep statement, they have time to switch over to MOTODEV Studio long enough to trigger the data capture.

The right tool for the job

MAT is a useful tool and can be an essential part of a diagnostic workflow. It takes the input from HPROF and displays it in a way that you can track memory allocation issues. It doesn't track API usage and it won't tell you which processes are using too much of the CPU. But, used properly, it can help you create a faster and more efficient application.

Good luck with your mobile applications and thank you for using MOTODEV Studio.

Eric