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Does this noticeably improve build times and general smoothness? Because that's been the major problem with Android Studio.

by otalp 9y ago

hrydgard 9y ago
For big mostly-C++ projects, it's considerably smoother than 2.3. It's still pretty slow to open and "gradle sync".
duiker101 9y ago
I don't think it does too much but it improves on the instant run feature which does indeed make a huge difference but at times is still dodgy
izacus 9y ago
Yes, the new Gradle plugin reworks how dependecies are handled (significantly improving compile times for larger modular apps) and has quite a few improvements in configuration and resource processing performance. Instant run has apparently been rewritten as well. Unfortunately those changes do mean a few breaking changes for build.gradle files.
- vorg 9y ago
  If most of my build.gradle files need to be tweaked in order to work with AS 3.0, then I might as well just rewrite them in Kotlin -- after all, they're only 30 lines long. That way, I can use Kotlin as my programming language for Android and my build scripting language.
on_and_off 9y ago
>noticeably improve build times yes, the newish build model is modular, allowing to only compile what needs to. Still not perfect but a huge improvement. >general smoothness Just as before, give enough ram to AS. Generally if it is slow it is because it is constantly trashing the memory.
- mikestew 9y ago
  Trashing memory, or thrashing? Because with AS, I’ll believe either.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    thrashing, english is not my first language ^^ Hmm; I have been running extremely large projects on AS with a good but not out of this world machine. Compilation times are too slow for my taste (ie even clean should take less than 5 seconds ideally), but the IDE itself is pretty smooth. Again, the trick is to monitor its memory usage. It is a pity that it's up to the user to configure this, but for large projects I had to allocate more memory to AS and it makes it go from unusable to lag free.
    - mikestew 9y ago
      thrashing, english is not my first language ^^ No, no, your English is fine, it's AS that's the problem. :-) I assumed that it was probably a typo of some sort, but I would truly have believed either usage. Though AS has gotten better about not trashing memory. That said, I agree that with a properly provisioned machine, AS does well. And it's a vast improvement over its predecessor.
chickenbane 9y ago
Yes, this was a major focus for the new Android Gradle Plugin. Unfortunately, this did mean breaking their Gradle DSL (part of reason for the new 3.0 version). Here's a talk discussing the changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKRK4SvMtRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKRK4SvMtRk

Does this noticeably improve build times and general smoothness? Because that's been the major problem with Android Studio.

by otalp 9y ago

Does this noticeably improve build times and general smoothness? Because that's been the major problem with Android Studio.

hrydgard 9y ago

For big mostly-C++ projects, it's considerably smoother than 2.3. It's still pretty slow to open and "gradle sync".

duiker101 9y ago

I don't think it does too much but it improves on the instant run feature which does indeed make a huge difference but at times is still dodgy

izacus 9y ago

Yes, the new Gradle plugin reworks how dependecies are handled (significantly improving compile times for larger modular apps) and has quite a few improvements in configuration and resource processing performance. Instant run has apparently been rewritten as well. Unfortunately those changes do mean a few breaking changes for build.gradle files.

vorg 9y ago
If most of my build.gradle files need to be tweaked in order to work with AS 3.0, then I might as well just rewrite them in Kotlin -- after all, they're only 30 lines long. That way, I can use Kotlin as my programming language for Android and my build scripting language.

on_and_off 9y ago

>noticeably improve build times yes, the newish build model is modular, allowing to only compile what needs to. Still not perfect but a huge improvement. >general smoothness Just as before, give enough ram to AS. Generally if it is slow it is because it is constantly trashing the memory.

mikestew 9y ago
Trashing memory, or thrashing? Because with AS, I’ll believe either.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  thrashing, english is not my first language ^^ Hmm; I have been running extremely large projects on AS with a good but not out of this world machine. Compilation times are too slow for my taste (ie even clean should take less than 5 seconds ideally), but the IDE itself is pretty smooth. Again, the trick is to monitor its memory usage. It is a pity that it's up to the user to configure this, but for large projects I had to allocate more memory to AS and it makes it go from unusable to lag free.
  - mikestew 9y ago
    thrashing, english is not my first language ^^ No, no, your English is fine, it's AS that's the problem. :-) I assumed that it was probably a typo of some sort, but I would truly have believed either usage. Though AS has gotten better about not trashing memory. That said, I agree that with a properly provisioned machine, AS does well. And it's a vast improvement over its predecessor.

chickenbane 9y ago

Yes, this was a major focus for the new Android Gradle Plugin. Unfortunately, this did mean breaking their Gradle DSL (part of reason for the new 3.0 version). Here's a talk discussing the changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKRK4SvMtRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKRK4SvMtRk