Android Development from command line

Motivation

Android Development without Android Studio IDE. Why should usethis approach? In my opinion it's much faster then startup the code environment. Two steps only.

./start-emulator # ready within: ~ 1-2s
./gradlew installDebug # install up: ~ 1s

Our starting point will be installing the command line tools (around 100MB). The Android SDK isn't delivered in the command line tools.

NOTE The Android SDK Command-Line Tools package replaces the deprecated SDK Tools package.

Use a fast editor e.g. Atom (with kotlin support: apm install language-kotlin)

What about logging in console?

With logcat (platform-tools) you can watch the logs of an app. More about logcat: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/logcat#filteringOutput

# example show only debug logs with tag # (#:D) and silent all others (*:S)
android_sdk/platform-tools/adb logcat #:D "*:S"

What about android sources?

You can just install the sources package you prefer with sdkmanager.

android_sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin/sdkmanager "sources;android-30"

Setup Android SDK and Emulator from command line

The following scripts will download, setup the android sdk, create virtual device and starts the emulator. All artifacts will be downloaded in current path under folder android-sdk. No ~/.android is used. Because of environment variable usage.

You want to uninstall the sdk?

rm -rf android-sdk/

Script: download cmdline-tools, install buildtools, install platforms.

install-android-sdk.sh

# android-sdk folder structure after script.
tree -L 1 android-sdk/
android-sdk/
├── build-tools
├── cmdline-tools
├── emulator
├── licenses
├── patcher
├── platforms
├── platform-tools
└── tools

8 directories, 0 files

Script: download system image, create virtual device, start emulator

setup-emulator.sh

# android-sdk folder structure after script.
tree -L 1 android-sdk/avd/
android-sdk/avd/
├── pixel_5
└── pixel_5.ini

tree -L 1 android-sdk/system-images/
android-sdk/system-images/
└── android-32

1 directory, 0 files

Code

# start the emulator
./start-emulator.sh

# copy this template: cp -R ...
cd boilerplate
./gradlew build

# deploy
./gradlew installDebug
./gradlew uninstallDebug

Links

• https://leventarican.github.io/android-android-1/