Roger is an Android visual resource viewer for OS X that dramatically shortens your edit-compile-test loop. Run the server on your MacBook; run the client on one or more devices. Every time you save a layout file or xml drawable, Roger will show it to you on your devices. You can then futz around with it - rotate your device, change the layout params on the container layout, fill its text views with long strings, or see what it looks like as a row in a ListView.
Roger has a lot of rough edges right now, so it should be considered experimental. We are using it in our daily development, though, so to the degree that we are irritated by it, it is under active development.
- Hands off resource visualization
- Multiple devices (haven't found an upper limit so far)
- ADB or WiFi connection
- View layouts and XML drawables
- Modify container layout params on the fly
- Support for SDK 8-15 (Android v2.2 - v4.0)
- Open mac/Roger/Roger.xcodeproj in Xcode and run.
- In Roger, open preferences, and select your Android SDK folder.
- Connect any number of devices or emulators. Select "yes" to install and start the Android Roger client.
Now, work as you had before Roger entered your life. As you save edits to XML files, Roger will show you what you are working on close to real time.
We wrote this tool to scratch our own itch. We all edit XML by hand, deploying to devices on a variety of versions of Android. Seeing the results of our work was tiresome at best, and downright infuriating when the problem was version or device specific. Roger solves these problems nicely, without getting in the way of our existing workflow.
Roger monitors your Mac for file changes. If a saved file is a layout or drawable XML file living in an Android project, Roger then does a dependency analysis to build a stripped down version of your project apk and sends it to all of your devices. Android Roger then opens up the apk, fishes your layout out, inflates it and displays it inside a container view.
As a result, the views you see in Roger are identical to what you see when you inflate them at runtime in your own application. And because not every resource is included, Roger can also be much faster than building and running your entire app.
We would love any feedback you have on this project. If you have any problems with Roger, please throw them into Issues as quickly as possible! We would also love to hear any suggestions for how to make Roger better and more useful.
Bill Phillips - phillips@bignerdranch.com
Roger currently supports everything from v2.2 on up. No guarantee about specific devices, apart from the devices we have personal experience with (Nexus S w/ICS, Xoom w/3.2, emulators 2.2+). Roger does inappropriate things with reflection to do its things, so device-specific problems are not out of the realm of possibility.
Yes. Emulators do not support WiFi.
Roger will attempt to use both wherever it can. WiFi is usually faster, but if ADB loads quicker it will try to cancel the WiFi download.
There is currently no support for application or activity specific themes. Layouts will load with the same theme as Roger (which is the default theme for targetSdkVersion=15).
No.
No. Wondering if this is possible. Obviously not in the general case.
Not right now. You can work around this by using a layout file like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent" >
<include layout="@layout/merge_layout_i_want_to_test" />
</FrameLayout>
Roger seems to put my inflated layout inside a FrameLayout. Will Roger use a different layout than this?
Nope. Use the same workaround as above for this.