Android Studio was the opening presentation at Google IO 2013, and falls into the "clearly important, but we don't know when" category. In that sense, it's a bit like the new webp image format, launched by Google 18 months ago, but still not moving the needle outside the Googleplex and Facebookplex.
Changing development tools is not a trivial matter. Most
of us have put in significant effort to be productive in Eclipse, and
we don't relish the non-productive task of re-learning all the tricks of
a new IDE, even though we know we have to do it sooner or later.
This blog post reminds you that Android Studio is only going to become more important, and lists key resources to get you started. Whether you work through these now, or bookmark and put it off till you can make it a New Years resolution, these links will help you get familiar with Android Studio.
Studio is based on the open source edition of the very popular IntelliJ IDE. It is in widespread use and has been proven over a dozen years. You'd think there would be a profusion of "Get started with Studio" blogs. But you would be wrong about that. There are 360,000 hits on YouTube, though. Let me know if you find a good one.
This blog post reminds you that Android Studio is only going to become more important, and lists key resources to get you started. Whether you work through these now, or bookmark and put it off till you can make it a New Years resolution, these links will help you get familiar with Android Studio.
Studio is based on the open source edition of the very popular IntelliJ IDE. It is in widespread use and has been proven over a dozen years. You'd think there would be a profusion of "Get started with Studio" blogs. But you would be wrong about that. There are 360,000 hits on YouTube, though. Let me know if you find a good one.
Although IntelliJ IDEs have been around a long time, that's not the
case for the Android Studio incarnation, which is Google's brainchild.
Accordingly, you may hit bugs in Studio. Bugs in open source Android projects (like Studio) can be reported here and bugs in Google's private code here - like most developers, Google only fixes the bugs they know about.
Here are my top ten annotated resources for learning Android Studio, in rough order of application.
- http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html download and install Studio. The IDE is currently in Beta, so don't use it on any project in a critical phase.
-
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/migrate.html
read Google's notes on "Migrating from Eclipse". Watch out for items
that are no longer in sync with the build you downloaded. The code
changes sometimes get ahead of the docs. Also check out http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio-tips.html which
is not about installing at all. It's a collection of simple but
essential features. Among other things, it explains why your files are
laid out differently compared with Eclipse (to help the new Gradle build
system).
-
http://tools.android.com/ bookmark
and check in with the website of Google's Android tools team. Note that
a new beta release of Studio, December 8th, 2014 - Android Studio 1.0 Released!. These guys are working hard towards the general
release.
-
http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/userguide_single.html
Studio flips the underlying Android build system from Ant (which is
XML-based and showing its age) to Gradle (which has the benefit of
having another go at the things that didn't work well in earlier
systems). This is a lengthy user guide to Gradle, but worth skimming
and noting items for later study.
- http://gradleware.com/registered-access?content=books%2Fbuilding-and-testing%2F
An O'Reilly book on Gradle, with free online access (registration
required). Read the first 3 or 4 chapters, then return as needed. My
colleague Ian Harris also wrote a couple of nice blog posts on Gradle,
one that's a brief overview, and one that describes in detail how to get Gradle to include the Golgi library when building your app or server code.
- http://www.i-programmer.info/programming/android/5887-android-adventures-getting-started-with-android-studio.html
A good online e-book with the first chapter dedicated to using Android
Studio. The e-book comes with the promise that it will be updated
regularly. Note the advice to "make sure you have the latest Java JDK installed". Android
acquired the ability to work with Java 7 with the KitKat build, and
version 0.6.12 of Studio's gradle plugin. You'd already know this if
you were following item 3 on this list, because they announced it here. Whoo hoo! Diamond operator, multi-catch, strings in switches, try with resources, here we come!
- http://www.i-programmer.info/programming/android/5887-android-adventures-getting-started-with-android-studio.html walks
you gently through installation and basic use of Android Studio. The
pages are quick to read and follow along. If you only have time to
read one of the links in this post, maybe it should be this one. And
maybe this one, too. :-)
- http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-android-studio--mobile-22958 this
tutorial focuses on the basic functions of Studio. It's good to run
through this tutorial once, with Studio running on your development
system, to confirm and practice all the essential tasks that are second
nature in Eclipse.
- http://www.avocarrot.com/blog/5-killer-features-android-studio-know/ this
blog post describes more about 5 new features of Studio. Learn all
about the wizards, one of which provides statistics on installed base as
you choose the API level for a project. Here's what one Studio fan had
to say about the good stuff he found.
- https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/324603352 The Google IO post that kicked everything off. This was where Google uncloaked their project to get out of the Eclipse business and into the Android-specific IDE business.
One final hint about Studio - you'll see the words "project" and "module" bandied around a lot. A Studio project is roughly like an Eclipse workspace. A project in Studio is "an organizational unit representing a complete software solution. Projects don't directly contain source code." Projects may contain modules, which do have source code. A module is a unit of functionality which can be compiled, run, tested and debugged independently. A build script is regarded as a module, for example. An Android Studio module is roughly like an Eclipse project. This blog post explains the reasons for moving to Studio, and some of the new features to try.
What are your favorite Android Studio tips or webpages? Please post a comment to share with other developers.
