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Google Android Cellphones Handhelds Programming

Google Releases Android Studio 1.0, the First Stable Version of Its IDE 115

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes After two years of development, Google today released Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) aimed solely at Android developers. You can download the tool right now for Windows, Mac, and Linux from the Android Developer site. Google first announced Android Studio, built on the popular IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE, at its I/O Developer conference in May 2013. The company's pitch was very simple: this is the official Android IDE.
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Google Releases Android Studio 1.0, the First Stable Version of Its IDE More

Google Releases Android Studio 1.0, the First Stable Version of Its IDE

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  • Looks pretty impressive... (Score:3)

    by mlts ( 1038732 ) on Monday December 08, 2014 @07:13PM (#48551331)

    From what I've read, it looks like a decent IDE, comparable with similar items (Eclipse, for example.) The fact that it allows one to display text and other items and see how it will look on a number of devices at once is a nice touch.

    The proof will be in the pudding -- I wonder how usable it will be as a day to day tool for app developers and coding houses, especially with multiple people doing check-ins and such.

    • does it support ndk debugging? or is that a lost cause?

      • If you want NDK debugging, use the nVidia Tegra Android development pack + Visual Studio. It's the least terrible option out there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )
          That's all very well and good unless one doesn't own windows.
          • So get windows, unless you've got a better solution?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Borland ( 123542 )

              Oh for fsck's sake gentlemen. Android Studio is only the "free" option for Android. If you're willing to pay then a $400 corporate license for IntelliJ will cover you on Android in Linux until Google releases an official Linux edition. I haven't used others, but right off hand NVIDIA itself provides the SDK for Ubuntu flavors. I even saw AIDE for development directly on ARM devices. There is still Eclipse for the moment as well.

              So, uh, any other particular reason to continue arguing?

          • That's all very well and good unless one doesn't own windows.

            But not owning windows is more of a political issue than a technical issue. If you are a moderately serious Android developer that needs the NDK then getting Windows and dual booting your Mac or PC wouldn't seem to be much of a problem.

          • They you should totally continue to complain on the internet that nobody is meeting your exact needs for free. The rest of us will get some work done.

          • And also if one doesn't own an android device, or a PC powerful enough to run Android Studio comfortably, etc etc. There are some prerequisites to programming. If you don't want to fulfil them, find something else to do.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mark-t ( 151149 )
              Okay... but other than people who advocate using visual studio for doing Android development, when was having windows otherwise ever listed as a recommended prerequisite for Android programming? Don't you think that Android Studio itself would have only been released for Windows if that were the case?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Shados ( 741919 )

                Having cross platform support doesn't mean you cant recommend a platform.

                ie: git works fine in Windows. It just works better under *nix. Node-webkit works fine on a Mac or Linux. Its just lightyears (ya, i know, unit of distance...) faster in Windows.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by mark-t ( 151149 )
                  My point is that Windows has never been particularly recommended over other platforms as a platform for Android development over other platforms except by parties that already had a bias towards windows development before they were doing android development in the first place.
    • The emulator sucks. Unless you have an actual android device to test it on, you'll want to either shoot yourself or your computer.
      • Not trolling - apparently the Android emulator by Microsoft is faster and has more features (GPS, camera, accelerometer emulation): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visual... [msdn.com] Requires windows, but should be usable with Android Studio and Eclipse ADT.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )

          Requires windows..

          Which is about as much of a selling point for people who don't use windows as saying that something requires an iphone for people only use Android. In other words, it's an anti-selling point.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Requires windows..

            Which is about as much of a selling point for people who don't use windows as saying that something requires an iphone for people only use Android. In other words, it's an anti-selling point.

            Or it depends. Perhaps someone writing Android apps uses Linux right now but uses Windows on a regular basis. They could easily switch.

            Not everyone using Linux or Android is doing so as an "Anti-Microsoft" or "Anti-Apple" reason. They may be doing it because that's what their company provides. I know w

      • I have a few devices for testing. I have NOT tried this but it might be interesting:

        "The Remote Test Lab is a solution that enables developers to control devices remotely. Using the Remote Test Lab service, you can test your application on a real device."
        http://developer.samsung.com/r... [samsung.com]

    • Re:Looks pretty impressive... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Monday December 08, 2014 @07:25PM (#48551409)

      The proof will be in the pudding -- I wonder how usable it will be as a day to day tool for app developers and coding houses, especially with multiple people doing check-ins and such.

      It's already in wide-scale use. Most Android developers I know have been using it for a while; it surpassed Eclipse a long time ago. It was unstable, sure, but Eclipse was a pain in the arse. Android Studio was purpose-built for Android development, and it really shows.

      That's not to say it's perfect - it's slow in a lot of places, and the emulator is excruciatingly slow. But it's been quite a bit better than most of the alternatives for a while now.

      • Re:Looks pretty impressive... (Score:4, Informative)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Monday December 08, 2014 @07:37PM (#48551491)

        I don't know a single Android developer using it. I've heard of them, but everyone I know still uses Eclipse- in fact many rather program in a text editor than that- stability is more important than anything else.

        The problem with making statements like this is that major tools like this tend to fragment the population into two groups who don't interact much. So each side sees itself as "everybody uses". You need data, which nobody has (number of downloads is an ok-ish metric, but isn't really that good as download != use). The best metric I have is how often do I see problems about a particular IDE on programming question sites, and going by that one Android Studio is either perfectly bug free and easier to understand than any IDE ever made, or it has near 0 uptake. I'll bet on #2.

        • I installed the beta at the weekend, and had to follow an eclipse tutorial which mostly worked ok. There were differences but I figured them out. There were some imports that were not mentioned. I believe eclipse can automagically find needed imports and add them in (ctrl 0 i think) but I had to add them myself in android studio.

          Maybe now its out of beta there will be some tutorials written for it. eclipse is not perfect, i found that it wouldn't load a project using the latest api and had to drop to api 21

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Borland ( 123542 )

          The problem with making statements like this is that major tools like this tend to fragment the population into two groups who don't interact much. So each side sees itself as "everybody uses".

          Yeah, about that excellent point: Has emacs vs VI been settled yet?

      • I've been using android studio for a while now, it's much better than eclipse for editing android resources or referencing them from code. But I haven't changed our build process. I still use ant & adb from the command line for building and testing everything on actual hardware.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by euroq ( 1818100 )

        The worse decision we ever made in my team was to switch to Android Studio. It's much slower, and the few items that are better are by far outweighed by the many items that are worse.

        Better:
        * Expands R.id.string identifiers into the English text
        * Condenses some verbosity in Java, such as inner classes with a single method (think OnClickListener)
        * Shows colors on the left margin

        However, there are so many worse things. It doesn't have all of the refactoring features available in Eclipse. But by far and away t

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Cyberax ( 705495 )
          Antivirus? Are you fucking serious? Just turn it off and see what happens! I've never seen IDEA work slower than Eclipse, and I've been using both since 2003.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by euroq ( 1818100 )

            Are you fucking serious?

            Yes. And duh, I did turn the AV off, numbnuts. As I mentioned, turning it off improved build times immensely, but I never had to turn off AV in Eclipse. There are two speed comparisons: 1. the Gradle build system, and 2. the speed of the IntelliJ IDE.

            1. Gradle in Android Studio takes longer than the backend of Eclispe. In optimal conditions, it's as fast. But it's been worse in our project.
            2. You can watch the IntelliJ IDE repaint itself when switching editors. It's pathetic. There are also the intermittent

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Cyberax ( 705495 )
              Then your machine is broken beyond fixing. Which is kinda obvious since you're running an antivirus.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Borland ( 123542 )

          it surpassed Eclipse a long time ago

          No, it definitely hasn't. Even the Facebook SDK doesn't include instructions for Gradle/Android Studio (at least not a month or two ago when I looked)

          While taste is always subjective, I think you'll find that Eclipse has stagnated just as Netbeans did before it. You're facing two shocks to the developer system: 1.) Grade is very different from either maven or ant in practical use, and it can cause lost hours of productivity just looking at how to do operation x you used in the former build system alone. I can actually respect that, since the build system is the core of how quickly you can get shit done and a decree of an official build system for a pl

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by euroq ( 1818100 )

            Point 2 however, I think you're letting your inner troll take over too much of your post.

            Yeah, this is definitely true. What is pissing me off more than build times (which seems to have been settled greatly in the 1.0 release - now I don't notice the difference) is the slow speed of the editor itself. Repainting, auto-completions, tabbing through, etc. is slow, etc. There are a few missing features from Eclipse (although there are new features as well). I just hate the feeling of being forced to downgrade.

            However, in all seriousness, I don't think Android Studio is a piece of shit - I think it

  • goodbye Eclipse! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Good riddance.

  • The link [wordpress.com] in TFS is either broken or was taken down. The wordpress blog it points to is displaying a customized 404 error page.

  • intellij (Score:5, Informative)

    by farble1670 ( 803356 ) on Monday December 08, 2014 @07:52PM (#48551575)

    For those that don't know, Android Studio is JetBrains' Intellij product re-packaged to promote Android. If you like Intellij, there you go. It's a much, much better experience than Eclipse / ADT.

  • Everything's broken, as usual. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08, 2014 @07:54PM (#48551591)

    It still won't update from a 0.9 to a 1.0 version with a regular patch, prepare for all kinds of sorrow while you try to upgrade. Dependencies, good luck. Back up everything you have, twice, before you attempt updating through the SDK Manager.

    Gradle also hit 1.0, what a coincidence. If you get it upgraded correctly in-line without having to delete the entire IDE and start over, Gradle now takes longer and not less time to do builds.

    In addition, Gradle's upgrade will break your unit tests. Suddenly you get new errors like "The current Gradle build type does not support this test." Now that you have Android Studio updated, finally, you have to rip out Gradle and reinstall it by hand to fix this.

    Google suddenly closed 11,000 bugs [google.com] all at once, claiming they're all fixed and obsolete. 11,000 bugs, just solved overnight! Yeah Fucking Right.

    Your best bet is to back up your entire environment, wipe the PC, reinstall the operating system, reinstall Android Studio from the ground up, and then import your projects back in. Make sure to sacrifice a few chickens in your backyard and pray to Sergei to make everything work.

    I wish I'd never touched this platform, the developer tools are a constantly evolving state of CLUSTERFUCK.

    • It still won't update from a 0.9 to a 1.0 version with a regular patch, prepare for all kinds of sorrow while you try to upgrade. Dependencies, good luck. Back up everything you have, twice, before you attempt updating through the SDK Manager.

      that's why up until now, Eclipse / ADT was the blessed IDE. it's the difference between a beta and a stable release. if they keep breaking compatibility after 1.0, then that's a problem. and if you didn't like it, you should have been using ADT, or Intellij as it has all the same features (and more) of AS, but is on a regular stable release cycle.

      Google suddenly closed 11,000 bugs

      Invalid / won't fix bugs do get field you know?

      Gradle also hit 1.0, what a coincidence

      Gradle has been on version 2.0 for months.

    • Gradle is a brittle POS. I hope they address its shortcomings for 1.1.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by euroq ( 1818100 )

      A thousand upvotes, sir. Android Studio and Gradle has been a clusterfuck hair-tearing horror which has cost us dozens of hours of downtime. Well, maybe I exaggerate about the hair-tearing, but sure as hell not about the dozens of lost hours.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hax4bux ( 209237 )

        Another K upvotes from me as well. Android Studio/Gradle has cost me literally weeks of lost time. I will not be rushing to check the latest release of horrors.

  • Scala development? (Score:3)

    by wormbin ( 537051 ) on Monday December 08, 2014 @10:49PM (#48552519)
    Has anyone been using this for Scala development with the android-sdk-plugin? [github.com] I've been working on my first Scala android app and see it as a big improvement over Java. The only negative is that I've been using sbt+emacs instead of the blessed android dev environment (which used to be Eclipse) so I've been missing some features.

  • Its sad that this took so long that even Visual Studio will support Android and NDK development in its next release and Google is JUST NOW releasing real tools for one of its flagship data collection platforms.

    Android users (meaning both owners of devices and device makers) - You are the product, not the customer. FFS do you not understand the saying 'You get what you pay for'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )

      https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]

      These things don't exactly come cheap...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alcmena ( 312085 )
        Heh, you're assuming you can actually buy one. The Google Play store has been "out of inventory" for going on two months straight.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shados ( 741919 )

          I just got mine from t-mobile (a 64gb too). About a a week and a half from order to delivery. The 32gb supposingly only take a few days.

    • Stable fast mature IDE, check. Git integration, check. Closest thing to usable multi platform, check. Efficiency of c# (in getting work done), check. Minimum of screwing around before you can get to work, check.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xest ( 935314 )

      Why single out Android users? If you hadn't noticed that's the entire web now and just about every device manufacturer and most software manufacturers going.

      What, you thought Slashdot was being provided to you out of the goodness of Dice's heart?

  • Real men use vim

  • My experiences of Android Studio (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @07:09AM (#48553929)
    I've used Eclipse extensively and I've used Android Studio extensively. So far I have mixed impressions of Android Studio.

    In its favour the Android integration is far better - obviously. Android Studio provides all of the tools out of the box to build an Android app from end to end which includes all the packaging and signing at the end. In Eclipse you can can develop and debug easily enough but if you want an apk you have to manually invoke a dialog to package and sign APK. This is a huge pain.

    Note that AS doesn't actually build anything. Everything is farmed out to a gradle script. This means you can build from AS, or the command line or even from Jenkins from the same script. This is very useful and you can your own custom tasks, unit tests and other goodness to your scripts. But... gradle is goddamned slow. As in REALLY slow. Even if you configure it spawn a daemon so it doesn't respawn all the time (yes I've done that) it's still slow. The problem is if you change a Java class it still has to run through every task checking the dependencies to see what needs to be built and it takes too damned long.

    Eclipse is extremely good at incremental building so you can make a change and hit run and in seconds you're debugging. Eclipse is also superior for marking code in error - AS only tends to know about errors local to the file, e.g. syntax errors. If you call a method in another class and get the params wrong you might only be told when gradle reports an error. In Eclipse it would have told you instantly which means turnaround is so much faster. I also prefer the Java editor in Eclipse, because it knows more about your project as a whole, the code completion and hints are more immediate and useful. I'm also used to the keybindings but AS has some Eclipse keybindings so that doesn't matter too much.

    Android Studio does have some excellent code analysis tools. It has Android lint integrated into the build and there are a pile of things it can search for in addition to that and in many cases will offer automatic solutions. It also has nicely integrated view and fragment editors which work better than the ones in Eclipse.

    AS is a terrible CPU hog. I've noticed it eating anywhere between 5-30% of the CPU depending on what panes are open. This is a serious problem on a laptop because the fan starts whirring and the battery life suffers. The command prompt pane is the worst of all and I only assume it's killing the CPU by continuously polling. Source code integration is also inferior to Eclipse - EGit is a wonderfully mature plugin these days with some complex and useful functionality - the support for Git in AS seems quite perfunctory by comparison although it covers the basics.

    So to summarise pros for AS:

    1. End to end builds for Android apps
    2. More integration for Android tools
    3. Excellent code analysis
    4. External build system making it easier to do custom tasks and automated builds.

    And the cons:

    1. Gradle really sucks for iterative development and slows things down. It's also a massive learning curve.
    2. AS is a CPU hog
    3. Source control integration is weaker
    4. If you have a mixed development environment (e.g. client and server side components) or multiple targets then an Android-centric IDE might not be so good as Eclipse.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )

      Thanks! I literally just decided to get into this the day before this article was published, and your review is very helpful. Thanks.

    • Note: AS highlights errors just fine, you don't need to build to get told your method params are wrong. Its code inspection is generally much smarter than Eclipse's and you can go in and turn things on/off. More inspection = more CPU while you type stuff. Also, if you're working on non-Android components simultaneously as you suggest, try IntelliJ IDEA (Community Edition) instead, it's exactly the same IDE, same support for Android stuff, plus everything else Java. Also see the plugin browser in the set

  • I'm working on my first Android app right now, using Andoid Studio. I'm thrilled, as I could NOT get a stable Eclipse environment working for Android on my Windows box, even though I had successfully done Blackberry programming with Eclipse.

    AS beta 0.8.14 has been rock solid. I'm a bit paranoid to upgrade in the middle of a project, and will stick to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.

  • Are there any significant advantages of using Studio vs vanilla IntelliJ (which does have Android support) other than the Google branding?

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