They expect developers to use high-level tools provided by Android Studio like developer.android.com/studio/debug/d rather than using the low-level SDK directly or the on-device with direct use of tools like `cmd` and `dumpsys`. It's treated pretty much like an implementation detail.
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okay but in practice people use adb and stuff, i encounter people talking about using adb much more often than i talk about people using android studio
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does *android studio* let me upload directories full of files to the data directory?
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Sure, it offers a high-level file-management interface including uploading directories. They have a split between the implementation / plumbing layer and the tooling aimed at app developers that's designed for ease of use including hiding confusing implementation details.
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when i run android studio all it does is print strange error messages
different error messages every time
it has a "debug apk" feature but it makes me hand-select every single .so
and i have to re-do this every time i make a new build
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because once an "apk project" is created it memorizes THAT EXACT apk and THOSE EXACT .so's, if the file changes on disk it cannot seem to be able to reflect that
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overall android studio seems to have many, many details i have to learn, the "details" of android studio seem to be much more complicated and unapproachable than the much simpler "implementation details" of simply uploading files and then running them
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so it doesn't really seem the goals you suggest google had in designing the system this way, were successfully achieved in practice
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I prefer the workflow used for OS development including the declarative build system, which I find far easier to use than gradle especially since it works very well for native code. I don't bother to fight against it and use gradle, etc. for standalone app development though.
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Replying to
Hm, that is interesting.
I am currently using Gradle because I need to use libraries built using both ndkbuild and cmake. It seems Gradle is the only tool that can integrate both.
But I am encountering some problems with Gradle :(
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Replying to
I can't stand gradle. I'd recommend docs.bazel.build/versions/maste if you aren't too heavily invested yet.
AOSP build system is currently a mix of new (Blueprint) and old (Android.mk) and has never involved gradle:
android.googlesource.com/platform/exter.
android.googlesource.com/platform/packa
Replying to
Can Gradle invoke cmake?
The really important thing to me is that I'm trying to port a piece of desktop software to android by incorporating it into an android project as a git submodule. The Android plugin for gradle has this externalNativeBuild { cmake } thing…