What happened
● Trying to build an Android Project
○ Typical project
○ Multi module
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What happened
● Trying to build an Android Project
○ Native code (NDK)
○ Common dependencies:
Retrofit, Dagger, Rx, Support
Libraries, etc
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What happened
● Laptop: Macbook Air (early 2014)
○ Core i5(1.4 Ghz)
○ 4GB DDR3 RAM
○ 128GB SSD
○ Intel HD Graphics (1.5GB)
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What happened
My build times:
~37 min
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What happened
My build times:
~37 min
Not just the first time, but every
other build after that too
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What happened
My build times:
~37 min
…and not only that
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What happened
...but also
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What happened
With a few gradle tweaks in the
project.
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https://guides.gradle.org/performance/
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What happened
Build times down to
~28 min
With a few gradle tweaks in the
project.
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https://guides.gradle.org/performance/
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What happened
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After exhausting all possibilities.
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What happened
Switched to Terminal builds and
VS Code Editor.
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After exhausting all possibilities.
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What happened
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What happened
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Final result.
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What happened
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Build times down to ~3
minutes(
89% reduction)
Final result.
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How I reduced my Android build times by 89%
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I was just happy that I was not in a
spot like this guy
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The experience.
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The experience
State of speed: Slow
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The experience
Basically this...
State of speed: Slow
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The experience
State of speed: Slow
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The experience
State of reliability: Critical issues
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The experience
State of reliability: Critical issues
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https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/133864394
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The experience
State of reliability: Critical issues
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https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/133864394
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The experience
State of reliability: Critical issues
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~3 months
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/133864394
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The experience
State of reliability: Finicky
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The experience
State of reliability: Finicky
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The experience
To a point where someone had to
build this:
A nuke script!
https://github.com/rock3r/deep-clean
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The experience
- Tweet dated: 26 July 2019
- Android Studio 3.5 Stable
(released): 20 August 2019
> Was already on bleeding edge
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https://twitter.com/nisrulz/status/1154760
114026532864
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The experience
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https://twitter.com/nisrulz/status/1154758411684392961
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The experience
State of polish:
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https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/c
omments/d271hc/wildly_infuriating/
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The experience
State of choice: Forced, deviates from base
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The experience
State of memory consumption: Not suitable
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The experience
State of memory consumption: Not suitable
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The experience
State of memory consumption: Not suitable
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The experience
State of CPU consumption: Unacceptable
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The experience
State of CPU consumption: Unacceptable
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The experience
State of updates: Unreliable
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The experience
State of result: false-positives
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The experience
State of result: false-positives
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Energy Profiler
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Constraint Layout Editor
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Resource Manager
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Apply Changes
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Apply Changes
https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/android-studio-pro
ject-marble-apply-changes-e3048662e8cd
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Apply Changes
https://developer.android.com/studio/known-issues#appl
y-changes-ki-verification-errors
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The experience
State of tools: Limited
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Deployments
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The experience
To summarize, Android Studio is
● Slow
● Finicky
● Forces its defaults and deviates from its base
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The experience
To summarize, Android Studio is
● New tools are limiting
○ Energy Profiler
○ Constraint Layout Editor
○ Resource Manager
○ Apply Changes
○ Deployments options
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The experience
To summarize, Android Studio is
● Uses a lot of Memory and CPU
● Has versioning quality problem
(Stable, Beta, Alpha)
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and Workarounds.
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Slow, but why?
● Gradle Configuration
● Indexing changes in code
● Plugins
● Code Insight: Inplace analysis/inspections
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Use the latest Gradle release.
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Incremental compile 1000-module Java project
https://gradle.org/whats-new/gradle-5/
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Use the latest Gradle release.
Caveat:
Update to latest Canary release of Android Studio,
since the support for latest Gradle is tied to
Android Studio release.
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Build Cache: Reuse outputs from any previous
invocation of Gradle
// Add this in your global gradle.properties file
// at ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
// Enable Build Cache
android.enableBuildCache=true
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Daemon: Dedicated background process to improve
performance of Gradle
// Add this in your global gradle.properties file
// at ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
// Enable Gradle Daemon
org.gradle.daemon=true
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Allocate memory: Increase the memory provided to JVM
// Add this in your global gradle.properties file
// at ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
// Configure allocated memory
org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Parallel builds: Force Gradle to execute tasks in
parallel as long as those tasks are in different
projects.
// Add this in your global gradle.properties file
// at ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
// Enable Parallel builds
org.gradle.parallel=true
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Configuring Gradle for speed
Execution: Prefer running specific task over general
ones
// Creates AAR for every module and all variants!
./gradlew assemble
// Creates AAR for every module’s debug variant
./gradlew assembleDebug
// Creates AAR for only `mymodule` in debug variant!
./gradlew :mymodule:assembleDebug
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Reducing Indexing
If your codebase has files changing on each build, it
will trigger indexing.
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Reducing Indexing
Suggestions:
● Avoid using annotation processors
Or use incremental annotation processors
● Using implementation as much as possible, instead
of api.
● Use static build config values i.e version code,
version name, resources
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Plugins: Inspect what you use
Android Studio comes with a lot of Plugins enabled,
which contribute to its sluggishness.
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Plugins: Inspect what you use
Solution:
Check and disable what you don’t need.
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Code Insight
Although required, it does make Android Studio slow.
Solution:
Enable Power Save Mode
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Terminal to the rescue.
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ADB: Android Debug Bridge
● Command Line tool
● Shipped with Android SDK
● Allows interacting with debuggable Android devices
● Client-Server program
● Available as: adb
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ADB: Android Debug Bridge
● Copy a file from System to Android device
○ adb push path_to_file /path_to_dir_on_device
● Copy a file from Android device to System
○ adb pull /path_to_dir_on_device/file.png
~/path_on_system/
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Other tools via ADB shell
● Activity Manager: am
● Emulator: emulator
● Package Manager: pm
● Device Policy Manager: dpm
● Logcat: logcat
● Dumpsys: dumpsys
...and many more.
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Gradle
Android projects use Gradle as the build system.
Each Android project has a gradle wrapper, which is a
proxy to local Gradle binary.
Android Studio invokes Gradle to execute tasks
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Gradle
The same can be done via terminal:
./gradlew assembleDebug
> is equivalent to Make in Android studio
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Lint
This is part of the gradle tasks, which checks the
code for structural inconsistencies, thus allowing to
write more maintainable code.
// Execute lint in project
./gradlew lint
> Similar to executing via Android Studio
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Lint
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Detekt
https://github.com/arturbosch/detekt
● Static code analyzer for Kotlin language.
● Helps to detect code smell in kotlin codebase
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Detekt
https://github.com/arturbosch/detekt
● Highly configurable
● Enables complexity analysis of the code
● Also has a gradle plugin to setup in the project
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Detekt
https://github.com/arturbosch/detekt
// Execute at the root of the project
java -jar /path_to/detekt-cli.jar --debug
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Detekt
// Execute at the root of the project
java -jar /path_to/detekt-cli.jar --debug
// Output
Complexity Report:
- 686 lines of code (loc)
- 563 source lines of code (sloc)
- 425 logical lines of code (lloc)
- 32 comment lines of code (cloc)
...
- 218 code smells per 1000 lloc
Project Statistics:
- number of properties: 73
- number of functions: 22
- number of classes: 5
- number of packages: 3
- number of kt files: 5
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Classyshark
https://github.com/google/andr
oid-classyshark
Tool for decompiling and
analyzing internals of an APK
such as dex Count. Works with
.apk, .jar, .aar, .class, .dex
or .so files.
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AVD Manager
● Command line tool to create and manage Android
Virtual Devices (AVD)
● Located in android_sdk/tools/bin/
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AVD Manager
// List all avd
avdmanager list
// Create a new avd
avdmanager create avd -n myavd -k
"system-images;android-29;google_apis;x86"
// Remove avd
avdmanager delete avd -n myavd
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Scrcpy
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
Command-line tool for mirroring and
controlling your device.
// Start mirroring the device
scrcpy
//Record while mirroring
scrcpy --record file.mp4
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Scrcpy
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
Command-line tool for mirroring and
controlling your device.
// Show touches
scrcpy --show-touches
// Switch off screen
scrcpy --turn-screen-off
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SDK Manager
● Command line tool to manage Android SDK
● Used to view, install, remove packages in Android
SDK
● Located in android_sdk/tools/bin/
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SDK Manager
// List all available packages
sdkmanager --list
// Install packages
sdkmanager packages
// Remove packages
sdkmanager --uninstall packages
// Update all packages
sdkmanager --update
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Battery Historian
https://github.com/google/battery-historian
● Python based tool
● Used to inspect battery related information and
events, while the device was not plugged in
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Battery Historian
https://github.com/google/battery-historian
● For Android device running Android 5.0 Lollipop
(API level 21) and later.
● Useful since the new Energy Profilers are Android
Studio only.
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Battery Historian
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Battery Historian
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IntelliJ Idea
● Android Studio is based on
IntelliJ Idea
○ IntelliJ Idea can be used for
Android Development
● Faster for development
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IntelliJ Idea
● Consumes less memory/CPU than
Android Studio
● Full plugin support
● More frequent updates
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IntelliJ Idea
● Doesn’t have the Android Studio
specific tools
○ Constraint Layout Editor
○ Profilers
○ Resource Manager
○ Apply Changes
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Mainframer
● Build your project remotely on a
better hardware
● Uses rsync to sync changes over
ssh and then builds the project,
syncs the apk back.
https://github.com/buildfoundation/mainframer
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Automation
● Alias creation enables executing complex tool
configuration as a simple command.
Example:
// Create alias to push release apk to Downloads folder in Device
alias pushReleaseToDevice="adb push ./apk-release.apk /sdcard/Downloads"
// Execute
pushReleaseToDevice ↵
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Automation
● Command line tools enable ability to include in
scripts. Using alias simplify the process.
# Install APK to device
# Use: apkinstall app-debug.apk
alias apkinstall="adb devices | tail -n +2 | cut
-sf 1 | xargs -I X adb -s X install -r $1"
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Automation
● Command line tools enable ability to include in scripts. Using
alias simplify the process.
# As an alternative to apkinstall, you can also do just ./gradlew installDebug
#
# Alias for building and installing the apk to connected device
# Run at the root of your project
# Usage: buildAndInstallApk
alias buildAndInstallApk='./gradlew assembleDebug && apkinstall
./app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk'
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Automation
● Command line tools enable ability to include in scripts. Using alias
simplify the process.
# Launch your debug apk on your connected device
# Execute at the root of your android project
# Usage: launchDebugApk
function launchDebugApk(){
local APP_PACKAGE_NAME=$(getPackageName
./app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk)
adb shell monkey -p $APP_PACKAGE_NAME 1 1>/dev/null 2>&1;
}
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Automation
● Command line tools enable ability to include in
scripts. Using alias simplify the process.
# ------------- Single command to build+install+launch apk------------#
# Execute at the root of your android project
# Use as: buildInstallLaunchDebugApk
alias buildInstallLaunchDebugApk="buildAndInstallApk && launchDebugApk"
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Automation
● Command line tools enable ability to include in scripts. Using
alias simplify the process.
# Take screenshot
alias screenshot="adb exec-out screencap -p > screen-$(nowdate).png"
# Remove app
alias rmapp="adb devices | tail -n +2 | cut -sf 1 | xargs -I X adb -s X uninstall
$1"
# Clear data for app
alias clearapp="adb devices | tail -n +2 | cut -sf 1 | xargs -I X adb -s X shell pm
clear $1"
More automation aliases:
https://gist.github.com/nisrulz/b0e79f2b3e27f99ca8b5dba9db6281ec
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Automation++
● adbe : ADB Enhanced
- Script to execute adb commands on all connected devices.
# Usage
# Run any command you would run with adb for all the connected devices
# ./adbe is the equivalent of ./adb -s
#
# Examples
# ./adbe version
./adbe install demo_app.apk
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Automation++
● adbe : ADB Enhanced
// Script body
adb devices | while read line
do
if [ ! "$line" = "" ] && [ `echo $line | awk '{print $2}'` = "device" ]
then
device=`echo $line | awk '{print $1}'`
echo "$device $@ ..."
adb -s $device $@
fi
done
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Automation
● Use gradle plugin to setup all the automation commands
Novoda’s Gradle Android command plugin creates handy gradle
tasks in the project itself.
https://github.com/novoda/gradle-android-command-plugin
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Automation
● Use gradle plugin to setup all the automation commands
Some commands available:
● installDevice - installs the app on a specific device.
● uninstallDevice - uninstalls the app from a specific device.
● run - installs and launches the app on a specific device.
and many more.
Execute: ./gradlew installDeviceDebug
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The experience.
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The experience
● Project Marble
Project Marble is a multi-release and focused
effort on making fundamental features of the IDE
rock-solid and polished.
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The experience
● Project Marble
Already made improvements under:
1. UX and performance in Layout Editor
2. Instant Run has been replaced by Apply Changes
3. Emulator performance, Snapshots
4. Lint performance
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The experience
● Project Marble
Issues: https://developer.android.com/studio/known-issues
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The experience
{Command line tools}
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The experience
● APK Analyzer(GUI)
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The experience
● APK Analyzer(Command line)
// To print the file size of the apk in a human readable format
//Output: 1.7MB
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The experience
● APK Analyzer
// Prints the application ID, version code, and version name.
// Output: in.excogitation.deviceinfo 17 2.0.1
apkanalyzer apk summary myapp.apk
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The experience
● APK Analyzer
// Prints an estimate of the download size of the APK.
// Output: 1.4MB
apkanalyzer -h apk download-size myapp.apk
More info: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/apkanalyzer
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The experience
● APK Analyzer
// Get package name of the passed apk file
// Usage: getPackageName app-debug.apk
alias getPackageName="apkanalyzer -h manifest application-id $1"
More info: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/apkanalyzer
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The experience
● Size Analyzer
// Tool to understand the size of Android application.
size-analyzer check-bundle
size-analyzer check-project
More info: https://github.com/android/size-analyzer
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The experience
● Size Analyzer
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The experience
● Android Studio Poet
// Create a real life complexity Android project that
// mimics your own and observe the build times
java -jar as-poet.jar MyConfig.json
More info: https://github.com/android/android-studio-poet
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The experience
● Android Studio Poet
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The experience
● Simpleperf
A versatile command-line CPU profiling tool included in the NDK
for Mac, Linux, and Windows.
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The experience
● Simpleperf
# Find the percentage of time spent in each thread
simpleperf report --sort tid,comm
# See how function calls are related, call-graph
simpleperf report -g
More info: https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/simpleperf
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The experience
● NDK-Stack
It allows you to symbolize stack traces from adb logcat
It replaces any address inside a shared library with the
corresponding : from your source code,
making debugging easier.
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The experience
● NDK-Stack
# Live mapping
adb logcat | $NDK/ndk-stack -sym $PROJECT_PATH/obj/local/armeabi-v7a
More info: https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/ndk-stack
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The experience
● Other tools
○ NDK-GDB: Tool to start a command-line native debugging
session.
○ ASan (Address Sanitizer): Memory error detector for C/C++
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The experience
● Other tools
○ systrace: Tool to collect and inspect timing information
across all processes running on your device at the system
level.
○ dumpsys: Tool to View the Java heap and memory allocations
with Memory Profiler
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The experience
● Other tools
○ bundletool: To recreate, inspect, and verify Google Play’s
server-side build of your app’s APKs.
○ perfetto: collect performance information from your Android
devices via the Android Debug Bridge (ADB)
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The experience
● Other tools
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The experience
● Improving on-demand dependency inclusion
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The experience
… and a lot of cool new things the Android Tools team builds
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