Android SDK: one step closer

Starting with the latest android 1.6 SDK release 1, Google is distributing the Linux version as a TGZ file instead of ZIP.
We mentioned the problem of distributing the Linux version as a ZIP file in previous posts, loosing ownerships and file permissions is a problem when you install the SDK or NDK in a multiuser environment.

Well, we are halfway there, still there's some permission problems that you can fix using android-fixperms that can be downloaded from this site.

Use it like this, for example to change the SDK installed at /opt/android-sdk-linux_x86-1.6_r1

$ android-fixperms --sdk --sdk-dir=/opt/android-sdk-linux_x86-1.6_r1

Hope this helps.

Google Chrome in the clouds

Recently, you may have heard a lot about Google Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks that will provide a platform to run Google Chrome browser.
This will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010 and some time earlier for developers.
Well, if you impatience triggers and you can't wait so long, here is something that may help you cope with it.


This video demonstrates a cult thin client google chrome edition software booting straight to a Google Chrome browser.

IMPORTANT: This is not Google Chrome OS and is not related in any way with Google.



The main idea behind cult google chrome edition is to move everything to the cloud, even the operating system and configuration. This started as a cult stress test, which is a platform to further develop and customize thin clients Operating Systems.
cult google chrome edition it's initially targeted at thin clients, however it can be used by other classes of hardware and virtual machines as well. Using network boot, provides a platform to run Google Chrome browser too, but avoiding OS installation.
To achieve this goal cult google chrome edition is kept as small and fast as possible.

An early preview, as showed in the video, containing the most fundamental features but there's still a lot to be done.
A LiveCD/LiveDVD ISO image (only 35MB) is available for download. This same image can also be used to network boot thin clients, PCs or virtual machines as explained in the documentation.
Download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/cult-thinclient/files/cult-classic-custom/cult-google-chrome-edition/cult-3.1-classic-custom-tiny-google-chrome.iso/download, enjoy it and send you comments and suggestions to improve future versions.

More in depth information can be found at http://cult.codtech.com, specifically here.

Ooops!..., they did it again

Once again, the new android sdk 1.5 r2 for Linux is distributed as a zip file and if you intend to use it in a multi-user development environment and install it as root to protect it from unintended changes you'll find some problems.

But again, here you are a shell script to fix the permission problems, also useful if you are building packages for your platform. Set the SDK_DIR variable accordingly to your installation.

#! /bin/bash

SDK_DIR=${SDK_DIR:-/opt/android-sdk-linux_x86-1.5_r2/}

sudo find $SDK_DIR/ -type d -exec chmod a+rx {} \;
sudo find $SDK_DIR/ ! -perm -044 -exec chmod g+r,o+r {} \;

Hope it helps.

Android Eye Contact

I'm working on Android Eye Contact, and application that complements the standard Android Contacts application and provides alternative presentations.
The application, in its Lite version, can be freely downloaded from Android Market.
There will be also a Pro version, someday when people from other countries other than USA and UK be able to charge from their applications. In the meantime there's a very good opportunity to explore the possibilities analyzing what should be included and what shouldn't.
The main idea behind Android Eye Contact is to provide a seamless user experience easing access to contacts ideally using only one hand and with the phone closed, if we think about the available models only.
Some users requested features like Contacts Flow, and I'm now experimenting on this front, though I'm not completely convinced that this is a good way to glimpse through hundreds of contacts which usually don't have a picture associated.
Anyway, this is highly based on great pictureflow, a Qt2/Qt3/Qt4/Qtopia4 widget to display images with animated transition effect.

Comments, suggestions and ideas you may want to share are gladly welcome.

Android Meenie early preview: more features described

In my previous post we've seen some basic features of Meenie, like adding placemarks to the map while you are on the road, but there's a more common use case when you are planning your trip in advance and want to add some placemarks, let's say the airport, hotel, office, restaurants, etc.

While it's perfectly possible to use the same use case as being on the road, it's much more confortable to add those placemarks and search for restaurants, hotels or whatever you are looking for in the comfort of your desktop computer. In those cases we will be using Google Maps to help us.
Google Maps has a feature called My Maps, where you can define map placemarks, lines and areas.


Then using a conversion utility which is running in Google Appengine to off-load the processing of the map in the android phone, we will be able to download this map and allow Meenie to show the same content. To locate the map we will be using the URL that appears in Link, in Google Maps top right.

This is the result.



Some details about Google Appengine being access from Android and using the Google Maps Link URL in Meenie and other Android applications were ommited for clarity and will be discussed on upcoming posts.



As always, comments are gladly welcome.

ge2adt new release

In this previous post, we reviewed Google Earth to Android ADT  (ge2adt) a simple application to convert Google Earth's KML routes to a format suitable to be loaded into Android ADT Emulator Control.

ge2adt has been updated to allow the conversion directly from Google Earth's KMZ routes, avoiding the unzipping step.

Android: Testing on the Android platform - ApiDemos tests

This document can be read in Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddwc44gs_49stmqs7hb), cut and paste link.

A previous post,Android: Testing on the Android platform - Unit tests, showed how to add your tests and run them from inside Eclipse. Although these are very useful tests in our quest to Test Driven Development, they cover only a small part of our needs.

Android 1.0 introduced a whole new world of tests cases like ActivityUnitTestCase to run isolated unit tests, ServiceTestCase to tests services and even functional test of activities like ActivityInstrumentatonTestCase.



ApiDemos provides a set of tests but you will not be able to easily run them unless in a non convoluted way as the way they are structured it's not supported by current Android Development Tools (ADT) Eclipse plugin and you would need other tools, but the solution is so simple that I wonder why they are not originally provided in the way we will be changing them.

Google documentation is not helping either.

ApiDemos tests

Tests are located in the tests/src folder and they have their corresponding AndroidManifest.xml.

Inside this folder, tests like this one are found

/*  * Copyright (C) 2008 Google Inc.  */ package com.example.android.apis; import android.test.ActivityInstrumentationTestCase; /**  * Make sure that the main launcher activity opens up properly, which will be  * verified by {@link ActivityInstrumentationTestCase#testActivityTestCaseSetUpProperly}.  */ public class ApiDemosTest extends ActivityInstrumentationTestCase<ApiDemos> {     public ApiDemosTest() {         super("com.example.android.apis", ApiDemos.class);     } }

but we will not be able to run them not resorting to ant or maven, unless we make the following set of changes.

ApiDemosTest Android project

Create new project

Let's create a new Android project from within Eclipse, as usual New -> Project -> Android -> Android Project

Activity and Application name are set to Dummy because they are not used as we are seeing shortly.

Copy ApiDemos tests

Copy the tests/src folder from te original ApiDemos project and turn it into a source folder.

Fix the project setup to use original ApiDemos project to resolve references.

Copy AndroidManifest.xml

Again, from the original ApiDemos project copy AndroidManifest.xml overwriting the existing one

Build and run



If necessary, remove ApiDemos.apk if it has been already installed in the emulator.

Build ApiDemos and ApiDemosTests projects and install them.

Now, if you execute Dev Tools in the emulator and go to Instrumentation, you'll find Test for Api Demos. in the list.

Select it and you will obtain the tests results. Unfortunatelly by now, the reslts will be only visible in the logcat window

11-09 22:56:35.132: INFO/instrumentation(153): Test results for InstrumentationTestRunner=...................... 11-09 22:56:35.132: INFO/instrumentation(153): Time: 6.739 11-09 22:56:35.132: INFO/instrumentation(153): OK (22 tests)

or alternativelly, from the command line

$ adb shell am instrument -w com.example.android.apis.tests/android.test.InstrumentationTestRunner com.example.android.apis.ApiDemosApplicationTests:.... com.example.android.apis.ApiDemosTest:. com.example.android.apis.app.ForwardingTest:... com.example.android.apis.app.LocalServiceTest:..... com.example.android.apis.os.MorseCodeConverterTest:. com.example.android.apis.view.Focus2ActivityTest:.... com.example.android.apis.view.Focus2AndroidTest:.... Test results for InstrumentationTestRunner=...................... Time: 7.493 OK (22 tests)

Conclusion

So simple that I can't understand why they are not provided in this way by the original Android ApiDemos project.

Next time we will try to present test results in a more concise way inside the emulator as Electro did (video1, video2, video3).

Undroid

If NetBeans is the IDE of your preference you should take a look at Undroid, a plugin to enable Google’s Android SDK development.
I've installed it without a problem but seems that debugging support is missing in this first release.
I will give it a try and comment the experience in another post.

Publish to your blog directly from Google Docs

Do you know that you can publish documents directly from Google Docs ?
It's very handy and you can use Google Docs editor with its full power to add formating, links, pictures, tables and check spelling.

If you usually post large pieces of text with formatting t your blog you should take this seriously.

Help can be found here.