[ale] anybody doing android development and how?

[JD]

On 02/18/2013 09:15 AM, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> I'm doing some development on Android using the standard Java and Eclipse
> environment.  Eclipse is a bear, but it has the only readily available Android
> screen designer.  Right now I'm kind of in the weeds due to the evils of the LG
> G2x P999 phone I bought used as a development environment, but I hope to dig out
> of that trouble soon.  If you're gonna root your smartphone and install a 3rd
> party build, look for an HTC one.  The LGs are a real pain to work with.

The best value in a phone today is the Google/LG Nexus 4, IMHO.  Unlocked for
$380 (that includes the mandatory $15 2-day shipping when the device gets
delivered 6 weeks later). The lack of hdmi-out, swappable battery and microSDHC
slot really bother me. I miss those from a prior Galaxy device.

No waiting for some provider to decide to push an update. Google does this. The
quadcore runs fast and the display is beautiful.  The GPS works without any
SIM/cell data or wifi enabled, so offline maps can be used without a data plan.

My company has done some android development for a few clients.
I setup a dev environment (Eclipse seems to be THE only choice) on Linux and
attempted to migrate the project files from another dev into it.  Couldn't get
it working.  I was able to make a trivial "hello world" app, so the environment
does work.

Here's what I think:
* 8GB of RAM is not enough to run Eclipse or the android simulator
* Core i5 is not enough CPU
* Eclipse is a hog. It is slow, painfully slow and I'm surprised that anyone
puts up with it.

I have not bothered to root my N4 yet. There hasn't been a need. In v4.x of
Android, if you have the SDK loaded, system backups over USB are fairly easy
using something like:
$ $ADB backup -apk -shared -system -all -f $TARGET/n4-2013.02.16.ab

Not having root hasn't been a noticeable issue for me, though I would like to
use Permissions Manager to dump specific perms from many apps that simply ask
for too much access.

Fortunately, I wrote the back-end systems for the apps - no java there. Those
were written in Perl-Dancer.