Deprecated by Google in 2015, the Eclipse Android Development Toolkit (ADT) has lost the support needed to keep it up to date against the relentless evolution of Android technology. By the end of 2017 the original ADT had been succeeded by Andmore, which has a blend of MOTODEV Studio and ADT. Andmore is sitting at version 0.5.1 and there is no sign of another release, ever.
The Andworx project commenced in April 2018. The aim was to focus on Android application development, creating, importing, building, launching, debugging and finally releasing applications. This focus could only be achieved with the available resources by reversing out most of the changes made to the ADT by Andmore. So Andworx goes back to the original ADT in it's scope. It also adds a new build plug-in, equivalent to the Android Gradle Plugin.
Andworx has been under wraps while it's design was being establish but has now matured to the point where it is on a steady course and and developers are now invited to contribute to the project. In order to access Andworx, a zipped demonstration project has been set up to to show Andworx in action:
- import an Android project into Eclipse,
- launch the project application on a device
- debug
- export a realease version ready to be installed on a suitable device.
Thie sample project is configured to use contemporary API level 27 build tools. Many milestones lay ahead including:
- Create and configure a new project
- Add Tests
- All standard features implemented
- Incremental builds
- Multi-module projects
Once Andworx is generally available, then there is plenty of opportunity for innovation, perhaps introducing tools in the Eclipse Marketplace.
Andworx is a Maven/Tycho project which creates a P2 update site from which Andworx can be installed using the Eclipse Platform "Install new software..." menu option. The build process downloads a large number of dependent jars to be included with the Andworx components. There are also a large number of Maven, Tycho and Eclipse dependencies that take a while to download on first build.
Andworx targets Eclipse Photon and for development you will need Eclipse IDE for RCP and RAP Developers. The recommended test Platform is Eclipse IDE for Java Developers.
To more information, have a look at AndNowAndworx.pdf](http://cybersearch2.com.au/docs/AndNowAndworx.pdf).
- Java 8
- Maven - v3.5.2+ recommended
- Git
- Set up Maven toolchains configuration to point to your Java 8 JDK installation. Refer Guide to Using Toolchains and JDK Toolchain
- Clone this repository. The project will be placed is a directory named "andworx".
- From a command terminal, use Maven to build Andworx. Note that tool chain vendor and version parameters need to be included eg
mvn clean verify -Djava.execution.vendor=oracle -Djava.execution.version=1.8 - If a first time build, you will potentially observe a large number of files being downloaded to be cached on the local Maven repository. If so, it may be time for a coffee break.
The build, when successful, creates a P2 repository in project sub directory andmore-core/site/target/repository.
Once the build succeeds, Andworx can be imported to Eclipse IDE for RCP and RAP Developers. If you have not already done so, it is highly recommended to configure log4j before proceeding. One reason is that Andworx uses m2e to resolve dependencies and m2e uses log4j for logging. You will therefore be able to diagnose any m2e issues that may arise.
As a minimum, log4j should be configured to have a console appender and a root log level higher than "debug". The console appender stops m2e writing error messages about no console appender
configured for log4j. The log level advice prevents verbose logging to disk by m2e. You can get a sample log4j configuration in XML format from Log4j XML Configuration Primer.
To get Eclipse to read this file, you need to add a line to the eclipse.ini file after -vmargs eg.
-Dlog4j.configuration=file:/home/andworx/eclipse/log4j.xml
One good suggestion when setting up Eclipse is to clear all errors and warnings that appear in the error log at start up. This is achievable and makes anything new coming up more obvious.
The first Andworx install step is to set the Eclipse active platform to the Andworx target which is in a file named andworx.target.target located in project directory andworx.target. To do this, open the file with the Target Editor. It will take a while for the repository indexes to be loaded but then you will be able to click on a link at the top of the window to set this target as the current active platform.
Andworx is imported as a Maven project. Note that only the root POM and plugins need be imported initally. Also, on the initial import, Maven will request to install life-cycle components for Tycho which you should accept. Once this installation is complete it is possible there will be errors, in which case you should try to update all Maven projects. This is a Maven option selectable by right clicking on any of the Maven projects.
Eclipse Photon has quirks around when to clean projects:
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Some bug in Photon causes some projects to unexpectedly needing to be cleaned. This can be triggered by an automated build or cleaning a single project. The symptom is clean one project leads to several projects needing cleaning. The symptom Description is "API analysis aborted for 'org.eclipse.andworx.android' since its build path is incomplete". To get out of this state requires you to clean each of the other phttprojects in error, one by one, until the problem clears. If you are lucky, only one additional clean is needed.
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The project org.eclipse.andworx.build uses Dagger annotation processing for dependency injection. Sometimes a prject clean is required to regenerate Dagger sources. A Maven build can trigger this situation. The symptom is the project has just over 40 compile errors for missing Dagger-generated files. You will need to manually clean the project. Note this usally triggers the preceding bug.
There is one integration test which uses SWTBot to interact with Andworx's user interface to go through the process of importing a project and checking that an APK is built. This test will use the current display on which to lauch the test workbench unless arrangements are made for SWTBot to use a display within a display eg. on Linux use Zephyr.
The Andworx update site is located at https://dl.bintray.com/cybersearch2/plugins/Andworx/V0.0.3. There is both an Andworx feature and Andworx SDK feature to select, the latter is optional and contains the sources.
To see Andworx in action, you will need to download the zipped demonstration project and unzip it in a convenient location. For instructions, download the document AndworxGuide.pdf.