13 ms·

Introducing Android Studio

437 points by ishener 13y ago

untog 13y ago
This is huge. I've held out on Android development for many reasons, but my visceral hate for Eclipse is one of them. I know I've been able to use IntelliJ before now, but Eclipse was Google's example in tutorials, etc. Now I'm very excited to make an Android app.
- ddw 13y ago
  Same here. Can't wait to give this a shot.
- k3n 13y ago
  I thought Google was pretty heavily invested in the Eclipse ecosystem, I think they use it quite a bit internally (at least from what I can gather). Perhaps those efforts were more in the interest of supporting the community of developers which use their API's, though. I also hate Eclipse, even though I've tried my hardest to overlook its shortcomings. I'll leave it at that so as not to delve too far off-topic.
  - myko 13y ago
    I used to work on Google TV and IntelliJ seemed to be the preferred IDE to work with on that team at least.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    I think they mainly use IntelliJ internally, too.
- wsc981 13y ago
  Earlier this year I wrote my first Android app using Eclipse. After finishing the project, I decided I hated Eclipse enough to not waste any more time on the platform. I don't really like the Java language either, it somehow feels 'old'. But recently discovered Xamarin[1] and later this year will try to write an Android app again, but this time in C# using Xamarin Studio. I think it's a great alternative for Eclipse, though I will definitely check out Android Studio as well, if it's going to be free. [1]: http://xamarin.com http://xamarin.com
  - dodyg 13y ago
    It is going to be free since it is based on IntelliJ Community Edition. This time around try use Kotlin(http://kotlin.jetbrains.org/ http://kotlin.jetbrains.org/) instead of Java. It offers 100% compatibility with Java and it works nicely with IntelliJ. I wrote this fully fledge news app using Kotlin/Java https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers
- davesims 13y ago
  IntelliJ 12's Android support is vastly superior to Eclipse, in addition to being just a better Java IDE overall. I'm now very curious to know just how different Android Studio will be from IntelliJ. I'd guess it's going to something akin to the difference between JetBrains' RubyMine and Ruby/Rails plugin support inside IntelliJ -- same overall functionality with better UX integration for the domain.
  - dmiladinov 13y ago
    Even the community edition[1] supports android development. Just point IntelliJ at your android sdk installation folder, and you're off to the races! [1]: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/android.html http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/android.html
    - suyash 13y ago
      But I think this version is not the same as Android Studio community edition.
      - dmiladinov 13y ago
        You're right, it isn't. This post[1] from JetBrains helped clear the situation up for me. [1]: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-t...
      - yareally 13y ago
        If you switch the preview released today[1], it's nearly the same as Intellij (even the build numbers almost line up at 130.xx). I just prefer the Intellij preview for some of the features one cannot get in the Android focused IDE Google previewed. [1] http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/05/intellij-idea-13-early-preview-is-out/ http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/05/intellij-idea-13-ear...
        suyash 13y ago
- pmelendez 13y ago
  I share your visceral hate for Eclipse, let's see if this IDE would solve that :)
- ihuman 13y ago
  Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.
  - mey 13y ago
    I use Eclipse extensively personally, but the one thing that drives me nuts about it is it's general speed. Conversely I'm so well versed it in I don't have a strong desire to replace it at the center of my work flow. Just been getting better/faster machines over the years.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - smrtinsert 13y ago
      They took a step back with the CSS theming disaster which seemed to slow down the UI dramatically. Other than I have never hated Eclipse. It's very productive for Java development. That said I use SublimeText for every other language...
      - mey 13y ago
        For quick edits I will turn to jEdit or vim. I've also been giving LightTable a try and enjoying the early stages.
    - davedx 13y ago
      Same here. I was disappointed when I bought a brand new Macbook Air last year though only to find hitting cmd-s then switching to a different tab "loses" the save if you do it too quickly (among other general slowness). It's amazing how over so many years with massive hardware increases it doesn't seem any more responsive.
  - karlshea 13y ago
    I've used JetBrains' products in various forms (IntelliJ IDEA, Resharper for Visual Studio, and PhpStorm) for a long time, but every couple of years I was also exposed to Eclipse (Aptana Studio, and one or two other installs that I forget what they were for). Eclipse just feels clunky and not very well designed. Like they forgot to find someone to do UX work. Plus the workspaces concept is really stupid, and the versions I was using couldn't open a file if it wasn't inside a workspace.
- smrtinsert 13y ago
  This is pretty crazy considering the huge investment Google has made into Eclipse to create the SDK there. There is also a significant community investment in using Android with Eclipse. Eclipse once you get rolling is amazing, and most importantly its free which is a big deal especially to cash strapped individuals and businesses. What will happen with the existing Eclipse SDK? Also what about GWT? Splitting the IDE communities is bold. So many questions though.
  - ben1040 13y ago
    >Also what about GWT? Is GWT still even a thing they care about? It seems like they're pushing people towards Dart and Angular at this point. I/O last year was seriously thin on GWT, and it looks this year like there's only one session, which got misfiled in the schedule under "Google Wallet." https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/331474237 https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/331474237
    - chii 13y ago
      that's sad to hear, i quite like gwt. but ATM gwt is quite feature complete, except for bugs.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    > This is pretty crazy considering the huge investment Google has made into Eclipse to create the SDK there. What's pretty crazy is that they were insane enough to base it on Eclipse in the first place, seeing as it's probably the only IDE that so many people hate so intensely. I'm a Linux user primarily, use OS X at work, and detest Windows, yet I'd pick Visual Studio ca. 1999 over Eclipse any day. I'm an Emacs user, yet I'd switch to Vim in a heartbeat if I had to pick between Vim and Eclipse. I suspect you will find quite a lot of people with similarly strong hate for Eclipse. It's a trainwreck. Though in slow motion, as Eclipse never seems to do anything fast.
    - nevster 13y ago
      It's probably because the Community Edition of IntelliJ didn't exist when they started doing their Android tooling. Eclipse was more dominant back then. That's slowly been changing (thank goodness!)
- deleted 13y ago
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- ojiikun 13y ago
  Android apps are actually an extreme pleasure to code in vim/emacs and build from the commandline. The shell debugging tools are very nice, too. Eclipse doesn't really add that much to the experience other than setting up the initial required files.
  - davesims 13y ago
    Agreed! Not many people do this that I know of but it's a great option. I use a vim/tmux environment, but I use IntelliJ for a lot of the Java heavy-lifting. Let's face it, it's hard to match IntelliJ's autocompletion, auto-import, etc. inside of vim. I do use the vim bindings though. Looking forward to porting my ant scripts to gradle.
- bitwize 13y ago
  I've gotten by with Emacs and the command line tools. Full disclosure, I'm the author of this game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.parodycheck.rboots&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.parodychec... I'm hesitant to give up Emacs just to write for Android, but even so I might give this new gizmo a try.
  - p_l 13y ago
    Could you describe your workflow/emacs.d ? I've been thinking of going with Emacs for Java coding for some time, but JDEE always seemed to be missing something (and some of the newer options tended to eat hilarious amounts of resources or required maven)
    - bitwize 13y ago
      I really don't have anything special installed for Java. I code Java much like I code C, and don't have the advantage of IntelliSense or similar. Android makes this sort of coding easy, because it supports a relatively "small and focused classes" coding style -- much like Java in the 1.0.x days. Compare to, say, J2EE, where you HAVE to have an elaborate IDE just to wrangle the complex classes and all their interrelationships.
mtgx 13y ago
This sounds great. Google should've built their own IDE for Android a long time ago. It even has live code updates, and it can show how the app looks on different form factors. TC has a summary on it: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/google-launches-android-studio-a-development-tool-for-apps/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/google-launches-android-stu...
- thorum 13y ago
  "It's an IDE based on IntelliJ." I'm in.
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    I wonder if they've licensed something from JetBrains or if this "IDE" is an extensive plugin on top of the free version of IntelliJ.
    - king_jester 13y ago
      It's this, they said it was based on the community (free) edition of intellij.
      - Zigurd 13y ago
        This is great. It would have been hard to make an IDE with the polish of IntelliJ from scratch, but, without official support from Google for Android development plugins, layout editors, etc. I had been reluctant to make the jump.
      - Taylorious 13y ago
        That makes me angry. I really like Jetbrains as a company and you would think Google could spare some money and pay Jetbrains something.
        jlmendezbonini 13y ago
        Don't be angry...JetBrains sounds happy: "Confirmed! Android Studio is a new IDE that Google is developing in cooperation with JetBrains and based on IntelliJ IDEA. Details shortly." https://twitter.com/jetbrains/status/334725715922669568 https://twitter.com/jetbrains/status/334725715922669568
misnome 13y ago
This looks interesting. I've an iOS app for a local art group, and they've been bugging me for an android version. I'm going to take this as an opportunity to jump in.
mullr 13y ago
Starting at about 35 min in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM
- mullr 13y ago
  The killer feature that they showed is an integrated UI layout preview tool, in a pane alongside the editor. Click on a widget in the preview to select the element in your layout file. This is neat but fairly ordinary; the great part is that it can show multiple previews at once, for different device sizes. Or for different locales. These all appear to update very quickly, if not live, when you change your code.
- bulatb 13y ago
  Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM&t=34m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM&t=34m20s
chj 13y ago
any improvement on ndk debugging ould be highly appreciated
jefflinwood 13y ago
The resource preview seems to be the best feature of the new Android Studio - the multi-device layout preview is already available in the latest version of the Android development tools for Eclipse, so I'm not sure why that was such a big announcement. I'm a huge IntelliJ fan from my days doing server side Java, so I'm definitely looking forward to ditching Eclipse. I just hope it handles Android libraries better than IntelliJ used to.
gtaylor 13y ago
I wonder if these guys are going to be asked to change the name of their app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaushal.androidstudio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaushal.an...
- fixedd 13y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised since they're not following the brand guidelines. http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/brand.html http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/b...
dasmoth 13y ago
Any indications of when this will be released?
- veeti 13y ago
  There'll be a session about the new tools in a few hours, so there'll probably be more news then.
  - smrtinsert 13y ago
    Arg, missed that! Can you post a link?
    - veeti 13y ago
      It doesn't look like the videos are up yet.
- dombili 13y ago
  http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html
gleenn 13y ago
So stoked, I love Intellij, Rubymine, and PyCharm but for some reason setting up Intellij to do Android dev is always so difficult (and the Jetbrains pro version is not cheap at around 600 bucks iirc). If Google has made any of the env setup better I am all about this.
- oblio 13y ago
  The personal license (aka a person owns it, not a company) is €179. From time to time they have huge discounts - they had a Black Friday discount of 75%. Recently there was a 50% discount. Just watch the news on reddit or here :)
  - Joeri 13y ago
    Your company can't buy a personal license for you, so you have to pay for it on your own. I first got a pro license of phpstorm at work and liked it so much i got a personal license for my hobby projects. For me the inspections are what make the difference with any other IDE or editor, with the refactoring and code navigation functionality in close pursuit. Phpstorm runs fast enough even on my clunky old atom netbook, and the UI fits on its 1024x600 screen.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
I've just finished building my first proper Android app. I've built simpler things before but this was the first one that took significant development time. I would guess that about 20% of my time was spent debugging and fighting Eclipse. I thought Xcode sucked but it looked flawless compared with eclipse. Freezes, crashes, multiple emulators launching and none of them actually running the app. Errors in my code that weren't actually errors and were fixed through rebooting Eclipse. If Google can make Android Studio good it's huge news for Android development.
tomjen3 13y ago
Download link?
- Macsenour 13y ago
  I was looking for that too. Prolly later in I/O we'll see it and someone will post it here.
- dotpavan 13y ago
  http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html
ttrreeww 13y ago
They finally ditched that horrible thing called Eclipse!
slg 13y ago
I am excited for this. In my mind the importance of having a simple and targeted IDE can't be overstated. The best part of developing in C# or Objective C is Visual Studio and Xcode. Hopefully this does for Android development what those IDEs do for their respective platforms.
emehrkay 13y ago
I havent kept up with Android development much, but have they addressed the simulation and UI building issues (when compared to IOS or Windows Phone development tools)?
- myko 13y ago
  > have they addressed the simulation and UI building issues I don't know what UI building issues you're referring to but the intel based emulators run very quickly and I have no problems using them. Though I still prefer testing directly on hardware, for different form factors that isn't always an option.
  - emehrkay 13y ago
    I just remember some of my old co-workers who were developing cross-platform mobile apps complaining about how difficult it was to do UI stuff on Android compared to IOS/Winphone. It looks like they have addressed those concerns though http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333534/google-android-studio http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333534/google-android-stu...
- mtgx 13y ago
  Android does emulation not simulation.
6thSigma 13y ago
I switched to IntelliJ from Eclipse for Android development a few months ago. Best decision I've ever made.
airlocksoftware 13y ago
I've been developing Android apps for a couple of years now. On my machine, Eclipse degenerated to the point where building and running an app would lock up my machine for about a minute. So I made the switch to IntelliJ. It's been great so far, much more responsive. But there have been a few Android tools from Eclipse (the layout preview is worse in IntelliJ) that I've missed. So I'm insanely excited that the Android team is going to be building off of IntelliJ now. The next thing I'm waiting for is the new, Gradle based, build system. http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system
ichinaski 13y ago
Now I only need a VI plugin for this IDE.
- fly2never 13y ago
  ideavim is your friend
  - brightsize 13y ago
    That is fantastic, thanks! Idea just became my default IDE.
smackfu 13y ago
Is Eclipse worse or something when doing Android dev? It seems just fine to me doing normal Java dev, but to hear people talk it is the worst IDE ever invented.
- rubinelli 13y ago
  It's much of the same, really. You'll only notice you are doing Android development when you debug and it starts an emulator instead of a Swing app or web server.
- tracker1 13y ago
  Given I've had a lot more experience with the FlexBuilder fork than mainline Eclipse, I always found it incredibly frustrating compared to VS. Now, VS doesn't have all the features that are in other IDEs, but getting out of the gate is downright painful by comparison. I've used WebStorm (also based on IntelliJ) for NodeJS dev, and like it a lot. I still like VS more, but VS is so slow and buggy by comparison, it's hard to use these days. So I can imagine that this new variant will be very useful, and far better than Eclipse for the same work. YMMV of course.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  I hate its workspace concept with passion. Most IDEs just use some kind of project file, or are able to use directly build tools. But Eclipse always has to create this workspace full of metadata that it likes to corrupt every now and then!
  - smackfu 13y ago
    True, I definitely agree with that. Especially how working with multiple workspaces has to be handled outside of Eclipse, via shortcuts or something.
  - andrewcooke 13y ago
    you can specify the workspace locn at startup (with -d iirc) so with an alias and/or some bash scripting you can use a separate workspace for each project (I have my projects in ~/proj as subdirs with commands to select which is current - although I only use eclipse for c dev work, intellij idea for java + python). also, use a separate build tool (eg ant) and don't store build info in eclipse (basically, use as default a config as possible and "import from" the build tool). then if you do need to start from scratch you lose very little (and don't add the eclipse metadata to git).
deleted 13y ago
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rozap 13y ago
This is exciting. My biggest headaches with Android stem entirely from Eclipse.
musashibaka 13y ago
I would not be surprised if Google now acquires Jetbrains.
warrenmiller 13y ago
Is this to replace Eclipse or just be an option?
- BaconJuice 13y ago
  I think they will switch to this but Eclipse will always be option.
mikestew 13y ago
This could be what pushes me to start Android development. I just traded one of my spare iPhone 4s for a Galaxy Nexus, and started to dig into dev. But from my admittedly brief foray, it looked like a lot more fiddling than I cared to undertake right now. Sure, I use a combination of vim, xcodebuild, and a small bit of Xcode now, but if Xcode didn't exist as an IDE when I started iOS/Mac dev I wonder how far I would've gotten. As soon as the download link for the Android IDE is published, I'll be taking a concerted look into it.
madoublet 13y ago
The BIG question in my mind is: will this work on ChromeOS?
- joeblossom 13y ago
  Doubtful, given it is not web-based. edit: There is nothing definitively saying it is not web-based, but I do feel as if that would be a big talking point when they first introduced it if it were.
- koalaman 13y ago
  no.
- JasonFruit 13y ago
  I don't mean to jump on you personally, but your question is typical of something I don't understand: why do so many people seem to want to do desktop-type things on ChromeOS? It's not meant for that kind of work, and there are plenty of other OSs that are.
sivanmz 13y ago
This is encouraging news. I hope the rest of the industry catches on to IntelliJ tooling. Being offered Eclipse/Netbeans tools is the equivalent of getting a Dell laptop for work.
OrsenPike 13y ago
Any word on if this will be free or paid?
- BaconJuice 13y ago
  This is based off the Free Community Edition from InteliJ so I think it will remain free like Eclipse.
guelo 13y ago
The news is that they're switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ as the base for the Android tools. The demo didn't really show too much that was new, today's Eclipse tools can show multiple screen form factors and languages just like in the demo.
Jare 13y ago
Many of us game devs use C++ for performance and especially cross-platform support, so I am very interested in seeing how NDK support turns out in this. Debugging native code in particular has always been a pain point even for people who don't hate Eclipse.
- DTanner 13y ago
  This will be make or break for me as well. I'm able to code C++ with Visual Studio (and Visual Assist X) and compile it directly in the IDE with vs-android. The only thing that could make be switch over would be a robust NDK debugger.
  - corysama 13y ago
    Try Nsight Tegra VStudio. https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-tegra https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-tegra It's still rough and hampered by ndk's buggy gdb. But when it works it's beautiful! Visual Studio stepping between java and C++!!
- yareally 13y ago
  Intellij is working on upcoming support for C/C++[1] (one of their things they joked about on April 1st coming true) so I imagine it will take advantage of that or Google is working with them on it. [1] http://blog.jetbrains.com/objc/2013/04/c-ide-an-april-fools-day-joke/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/objc/2013/04/c-ide-an-april-fools-...
sergiotapia 13y ago
They're making it similar to developing Windows Phone applications, but in some ways even better! The live preview of different layouts is FANTASTIC! I'm super excited!
miles 13y ago
Early access preview available now: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html
- Felix21 13y ago
  THANK YOU
- sondh 13y ago
  Just a head up: you will need to edit the configuration to run on device (the default only launches on AVD). Took me a while to figure that out.
jimmy_wobbles 13y ago
At last! Eclipse sucks...
deleted 13y ago
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jonstjohn 13y ago
Looks great, too bad it won't even launch for me on Windows 7. Anybody else running into problems running it?
- omegote 13y ago
  I was about to post the very same. W7 x64, try to launch the program, execution seems to create a crss.exe -> conhost.exe that hangs indefinitely.
- loso 13y ago
  Thank you for posting this, I thought I was the only one and was going crazy. It is definitely not working for me on Windows 7 64.
- tomh- 13y ago
  Doesn't launch in windows 8 either
  - tomh- 13y ago
    Try to add a JDK_HOME environment variable which points to your JDK e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_07
- gianbasagre 13y ago
  Doesn't work on me either. Win 7 64
- walid 13y ago
  It doesn't launch for me either and the task manager doesn't show a process starting.
Dove 13y ago
The early access preview (http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html) is definitely prettier than Eclipse. Not that that's a high bar to clear. It also seems to be less stable, which is a high bar to clear. ;) Yeah, I know, pre-release software. The windows seem to take a long time to load, too. That strikes me as odd -- it's one thing when you're starting up some sort of interpreter, but several seconds to scan the project directory or open a file? Perhaps that's another pre-release issue. The layout XML editor looks like a big win, though. The syntax awareness, suggestions, documentation access, formatting and just all around general helpfulness seem to be about 1000x better than Eclipse. That alone would make it worth the switch! I think the biggest time sink for me while working on layouts is remembering "what's the darn attribute for..." It's all right there in glorious detail. The realtime WYSIWYG view is . . . cool, I guess. ADT already had that, though you had to switch to a different tab for it. Maybe I'm missing something; it doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. It still doesn't handle custom views, which I use a lot of. (And I mean a lot! Custom container views, too.) And I don't really like feedback while typing, anyway. YMMV, of course, but it looks to me like the big win is the text editor itself, not the graphical display. I've been meaning to get off of Eclipse for a while now, so I'll play with it more and watch how it changes. For now, color me experimental and cautiously optimistic.
- p_l 13y ago
  The long loading time might be unoptimized-yet parsing of various XML files of ones app. In general, it's mostly an evolutionary work on existing IntelliJ Android plugin. The View editor afaik has some support for custom views, but only some - it's rather iffy (IntelliJ Android view renderer simply used Android libs to render them, but of course that doesn't work for everything, and anything fully programmatic is dead anyway). Fwiw, IntelliJ's XML editor was always much better at not freaking out at the fact that you haven't finished writing that new tag so of course your view doesn't validate (something that was a constant for me back when I used Eclipse). The editors in general are standard for IntelliJ, with some nifty transformations added - the XML string example reminds me of how IntelliJ dynamically renders certain idioms into Java 8 forms while still keeping the code in 1.6 (well, that's how I have it configured, that is). In general, it's nice, I hope it will be available as plugin into plain old IntelliJ as well.
m_ke 13y ago
IntelliJ also just released IDEA 13 preview with all of the features. http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IDEADEV/IDEA+13+EAP http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IDEADEV/IDEA+13+EAP
krisc 13y ago
I've done one Android app for a college project using Eclipse a couple years ago. I've been wanting to get back into developing for the platform. Anyone have an opinion on a novice Android developer trying out an early access preview for this IDE?
rdemmer 13y ago
JetBrains Company Blog gives details on Android Studio: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-t...
dodyg 13y ago
The great thing about Android Studio based on IntelliJ is that Kotlin plugin should work with no or minimal change to work there.
BrandonSmith 13y ago
Android Studio, at present, embeds Eclipse... ./sdk/tools/lib/monitor-x86_64/ This seems to be the DDMS view of the Eclipse ADT.
booop 13y ago
While I'm quite excited about this, I'm surprised by all the hatred for eclipse in this thread. I develop in Java for both fun and profit using eclipse and it's been running solid ever since I followed the tips given in this SO thread (esp putting the jvm in a ramdisk) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up-eclipse http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up.... Perhaps those whose sole complaint with eclipse is its performance should try some of those suggestions.
- netcraft 13y ago
  Those are good suggestions that can make a difference, but if you haven't tried IntelliJ you really should. I used eclipse for years. Wish I could get those years back now. Eclipse is great, but IntelliJ is better.
  - booop 13y ago
    Okay, I've been using it since yesterday and I think it's _amazing_.
sigzero 13y ago
Anything to not use eclipse!
dsaber 13y ago
This is definitely awesome. I look forward to the stable release and moving away from Eclipse. Does anyone know if Android Studio will also be available as a plug-in for people who already have IntelliJ installed? I'm not too keen on having multiple versions of the same IDEs, that I have to each customize and maintain.
- dsaber 13y ago
  This post answered my question: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-t... "You can see the updated Android support in the Early Access Preview of IntelliJ IDEA v13 that is opened today...This EAP build includes all of the new features of Android Studio except for the new project wizard and the AppEngine cloud endpoints integration. These latter features will also appear in our EAP builds in the coming weeks."
programminggeek 13y ago
This is easily the most exciting thing to happen to Android developers in a long time. I am super jazzed.
catmanjan 13y ago
It doesn't seem to run on Windows 64-bit, here's the fix: http://www.twosquared.com.au/blog/6 http://www.twosquared.com.au/blog/6
georgemcbay 13y ago
Eclipse is a constant source of small annoyances for me, none of which by itself is a huge deal but when taken together color my view of the editor negatively. Unfortunately, switching to Android Studio presents a different set of issues, like lack of Perforce integration (using Perforce is out of my control here, unfortunately). I'd assume some sort of hybrid Android Studio/IDEA setup is possible, but even still the Pro version of IDEA that I would seemingly need to get any Perforce integration working is priced at a point ($499 and up) where I'm not sure I could make a justification for the purchase. Eclipse kinda sucks, but it also mostly works and the perforce integration on it is free (and also quite good, I have no idea if IDEA's is any good). I could, of course, just eschew IDE/VCS integration, but editor integration is, in my experience, kind of a big deal with Perforce because of the rather old-school model it uses of checkouts. It becomes really annoying to merge code in if you don't preemptively check things out before you change them, and having the IDE manage this by just checking things out when you first start editing them is a huge win. Pseudo-ironically, if the VCS I used were any of the ones Android Studio/IDEA gives you for free having support for it in the IDE would be less of a big deal for me, I'd just do all the VCS stuff at the command line.
- werkshy 13y ago
  I don't get it. Perforce is ~$200/seat/year. IDEA at $500 seems like a no-brainer compared to limping on with Eclipse.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    I work at a company that mandates Perforce for political reasons and getting budget for a $500 purchase when I can't reasonably articulate the benefits over the free thing we've been using all this time would be an uphill battle that I'm honestly not sure is worth it, because while I find Eclipse annoying I don't have enough experience with IDEA to know that it is not annoying in a different set of ways. I suppose I will try the 30 day demo of IDEA and see if it is worth fighting for, but probably not until Android Studio is more baked because I've played around with it enough to know that the 0.1 designation is warranted at this time.
dinofile 13y ago
Well after the 300MB download, I tried to create a hello world project on fully updated Mac 10.8.3 and my friend on a Windows 7 machine. Punch in a project name and go. Failed on both. Preview or not, you don't expect such dribble from Google. Mac error was: Can't register given path of type 'SOURCE' because it's out of content root. Windows error was: (After env var fix) "There must not already be a project at this location" and would not let a new one be created. If they can't test enough to guarantee basic project creation on stock standard OS's they shouldn't release it.
chetanahuja 13y ago
Lately I've been forced to use eclipse for Android development to create a demo app for our technology(* ). The general lack of responsiveness of the UI was so annoying that I basically took to doing all my editing in emacs and just manually refreshing eclipse windows for UI changes, build and DDMS views for debugging. A lot of my development is C/C++ code (NDK build) which I'm doing completely in emacs anyway, it mostly worked out for me. Can someone who has experience in IntelliJ tell me how well it might support a workflow involving an external editor ? Basically I'm trying to decide whether it's worth investing the time to switch over for my use-case. Many thanks in advance for an informative answer. (* ) for this -> packetzoom.com
namuol 13y ago
And here I thought I'd regret switching to IDEA due to the lack of official Google support. How serendipitous.
watermel0n 13y ago
Anyone that needs a color scheme, here is mine https://github.com/prignano/Obsidian2-IntelliJ-Android-Studio https://github.com/prignano/Obsidian2-IntelliJ-Android-Studi... already tested on Android Studio.
chj 13y ago
I was excited (tired of Eclipse), but after a test run, I think it is still slow, and still lack of native code debugging that just works, as in xcode.
praterade 13y ago
Does no one see that this is an obvious transition to make a proprietary Android dev environment? Sure, Eclipse can be a little buggy, but it's FREE. I'd rather take a free, third party IDE over something that will just push Google closer to world domination.

437 points by ishener 13y ago

untog 13y ago

This is huge. I've held out on Android development for many reasons, but my visceral hate for Eclipse is one of them. I know I've been able to use IntelliJ before now, but Eclipse was Google's example in tutorials, etc. Now I'm very excited to make an Android app.

ddw 13y ago
Same here. Can't wait to give this a shot.
k3n 13y ago
I thought Google was pretty heavily invested in the Eclipse ecosystem, I think they use it quite a bit internally (at least from what I can gather). Perhaps those efforts were more in the interest of supporting the community of developers which use their API's, though. I also hate Eclipse, even though I've tried my hardest to overlook its shortcomings. I'll leave it at that so as not to delve too far off-topic.
- myko 13y ago
  I used to work on Google TV and IntelliJ seemed to be the preferred IDE to work with on that team at least.
- mtgx 13y ago
  I think they mainly use IntelliJ internally, too.
wsc981 13y ago
Earlier this year I wrote my first Android app using Eclipse. After finishing the project, I decided I hated Eclipse enough to not waste any more time on the platform. I don't really like the Java language either, it somehow feels 'old'. But recently discovered Xamarin[1] and later this year will try to write an Android app again, but this time in C# using Xamarin Studio. I think it's a great alternative for Eclipse, though I will definitely check out Android Studio as well, if it's going to be free. [1]: http://xamarin.com http://xamarin.com
- dodyg 13y ago
  It is going to be free since it is based on IntelliJ Community Edition. This time around try use Kotlin(http://kotlin.jetbrains.org/ http://kotlin.jetbrains.org/) instead of Java. It offers 100% compatibility with Java and it works nicely with IntelliJ. I wrote this fully fledge news app using Kotlin/Java https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers
davesims 13y ago
IntelliJ 12's Android support is vastly superior to Eclipse, in addition to being just a better Java IDE overall. I'm now very curious to know just how different Android Studio will be from IntelliJ. I'd guess it's going to something akin to the difference between JetBrains' RubyMine and Ruby/Rails plugin support inside IntelliJ -- same overall functionality with better UX integration for the domain.
- dmiladinov 13y ago
  Even the community edition[1] supports android development. Just point IntelliJ at your android sdk installation folder, and you're off to the races! [1]: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/android.html http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/android.html
  - suyash 13y ago
    But I think this version is not the same as Android Studio community edition.
    - dmiladinov 13y ago
      You're right, it isn't. This post[1] from JetBrains helped clear the situation up for me. [1]: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-t...
    - yareally 13y ago
      If you switch the preview released today[1], it's nearly the same as Intellij (even the build numbers almost line up at 130.xx). I just prefer the Intellij preview for some of the features one cannot get in the Android focused IDE Google previewed. [1] http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/05/intellij-idea-13-early-preview-is-out/ http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/05/intellij-idea-13-ear...
      - suyash 13y ago
pmelendez 13y ago
I share your visceral hate for Eclipse, let's see if this IDE would solve that :)
ihuman 13y ago
Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.
- mey 13y ago
  I use Eclipse extensively personally, but the one thing that drives me nuts about it is it's general speed. Conversely I'm so well versed it in I don't have a strong desire to replace it at the center of my work flow. Just been getting better/faster machines over the years.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - smrtinsert 13y ago
    They took a step back with the CSS theming disaster which seemed to slow down the UI dramatically. Other than I have never hated Eclipse. It's very productive for Java development. That said I use SublimeText for every other language...
    - mey 13y ago
      For quick edits I will turn to jEdit or vim. I've also been giving LightTable a try and enjoying the early stages.
  - davedx 13y ago
    Same here. I was disappointed when I bought a brand new Macbook Air last year though only to find hitting cmd-s then switching to a different tab "loses" the save if you do it too quickly (among other general slowness). It's amazing how over so many years with massive hardware increases it doesn't seem any more responsive.
- karlshea 13y ago
  I've used JetBrains' products in various forms (IntelliJ IDEA, Resharper for Visual Studio, and PhpStorm) for a long time, but every couple of years I was also exposed to Eclipse (Aptana Studio, and one or two other installs that I forget what they were for). Eclipse just feels clunky and not very well designed. Like they forgot to find someone to do UX work. Plus the workspaces concept is really stupid, and the versions I was using couldn't open a file if it wasn't inside a workspace.
smrtinsert 13y ago
This is pretty crazy considering the huge investment Google has made into Eclipse to create the SDK there. There is also a significant community investment in using Android with Eclipse. Eclipse once you get rolling is amazing, and most importantly its free which is a big deal especially to cash strapped individuals and businesses. What will happen with the existing Eclipse SDK? Also what about GWT? Splitting the IDE communities is bold. So many questions though.
- ben1040 13y ago
  >Also what about GWT? Is GWT still even a thing they care about? It seems like they're pushing people towards Dart and Angular at this point. I/O last year was seriously thin on GWT, and it looks this year like there's only one session, which got misfiled in the schedule under "Google Wallet." https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/331474237 https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/331474237
  - chii 13y ago
    that's sad to hear, i quite like gwt. but ATM gwt is quite feature complete, except for bugs.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > This is pretty crazy considering the huge investment Google has made into Eclipse to create the SDK there. What's pretty crazy is that they were insane enough to base it on Eclipse in the first place, seeing as it's probably the only IDE that so many people hate so intensely. I'm a Linux user primarily, use OS X at work, and detest Windows, yet I'd pick Visual Studio ca. 1999 over Eclipse any day. I'm an Emacs user, yet I'd switch to Vim in a heartbeat if I had to pick between Vim and Eclipse. I suspect you will find quite a lot of people with similarly strong hate for Eclipse. It's a trainwreck. Though in slow motion, as Eclipse never seems to do anything fast.
  - nevster 13y ago
    It's probably because the Community Edition of IntelliJ didn't exist when they started doing their Android tooling. Eclipse was more dominant back then. That's slowly been changing (thank goodness!)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ojiikun 13y ago
Android apps are actually an extreme pleasure to code in vim/emacs and build from the commandline. The shell debugging tools are very nice, too. Eclipse doesn't really add that much to the experience other than setting up the initial required files.
- davesims 13y ago
  Agreed! Not many people do this that I know of but it's a great option. I use a vim/tmux environment, but I use IntelliJ for a lot of the Java heavy-lifting. Let's face it, it's hard to match IntelliJ's autocompletion, auto-import, etc. inside of vim. I do use the vim bindings though. Looking forward to porting my ant scripts to gradle.
bitwize 13y ago
I've gotten by with Emacs and the command line tools. Full disclosure, I'm the author of this game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.parodycheck.rboots&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.parodychec... I'm hesitant to give up Emacs just to write for Android, but even so I might give this new gizmo a try.
- p_l 13y ago
  Could you describe your workflow/emacs.d ? I've been thinking of going with Emacs for Java coding for some time, but JDEE always seemed to be missing something (and some of the newer options tended to eat hilarious amounts of resources or required maven)
  - bitwize 13y ago
    I really don't have anything special installed for Java. I code Java much like I code C, and don't have the advantage of IntelliSense or similar. Android makes this sort of coding easy, because it supports a relatively "small and focused classes" coding style -- much like Java in the 1.0.x days. Compare to, say, J2EE, where you HAVE to have an elaborate IDE just to wrangle the complex classes and all their interrelationships.

mtgx 13y ago

This sounds great. Google should've built their own IDE for Android a long time ago. It even has live code updates, and it can show how the app looks on different form factors. TC has a summary on it: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/google-launches-android-studio-a-development-tool-for-apps/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/google-launches-android-stu...

thorum 13y ago
"It's an IDE based on IntelliJ." I'm in.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  I wonder if they've licensed something from JetBrains or if this "IDE" is an extensive plugin on top of the free version of IntelliJ.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    It's this, they said it was based on the community (free) edition of intellij.
    - Zigurd 13y ago
      This is great. It would have been hard to make an IDE with the polish of IntelliJ from scratch, but, without official support from Google for Android development plugins, layout editors, etc. I had been reluctant to make the jump.
    - Taylorious 13y ago
      That makes me angry. I really like Jetbrains as a company and you would think Google could spare some money and pay Jetbrains something.
      - jlmendezbonini 13y ago
        Don't be angry...JetBrains sounds happy: "Confirmed! Android Studio is a new IDE that Google is developing in cooperation with JetBrains and based on IntelliJ IDEA. Details shortly." https://twitter.com/jetbrains/status/334725715922669568 https://twitter.com/jetbrains/status/334725715922669568

misnome 13y ago

This looks interesting. I've an iOS app for a local art group, and they've been bugging me for an android version. I'm going to take this as an opportunity to jump in.

mullr 13y ago

Starting at about 35 min in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM

mullr 13y ago
The killer feature that they showed is an integrated UI layout preview tool, in a pane alongside the editor. Click on a widget in the preview to select the element in your layout file. This is neat but fairly ordinary; the great part is that it can show multiple previews at once, for different device sizes. Or for different locales. These all appear to update very quickly, if not live, when you change your code.
bulatb 13y ago
Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM&t=34m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM&t=34m20s

chj 13y ago

any improvement on ndk debugging ould be highly appreciated

jefflinwood 13y ago

The resource preview seems to be the best feature of the new Android Studio - the multi-device layout preview is already available in the latest version of the Android development tools for Eclipse, so I'm not sure why that was such a big announcement. I'm a huge IntelliJ fan from my days doing server side Java, so I'm definitely looking forward to ditching Eclipse. I just hope it handles Android libraries better than IntelliJ used to.

gtaylor 13y ago

I wonder if these guys are going to be asked to change the name of their app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaushal.androidstudio https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaushal.an...

fixedd 13y ago
I wouldn't be surprised since they're not following the brand guidelines. http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/brand.html http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/b...

dasmoth 13y ago

Any indications of when this will be released?

veeti 13y ago
There'll be a session about the new tools in a few hours, so there'll probably be more news then.
- smrtinsert 13y ago
  Arg, missed that! Can you post a link?
  - veeti 13y ago
    It doesn't look like the videos are up yet.
dombili 13y ago
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

gleenn 13y ago

So stoked, I love Intellij, Rubymine, and PyCharm but for some reason setting up Intellij to do Android dev is always so difficult (and the Jetbrains pro version is not cheap at around 600 bucks iirc). If Google has made any of the env setup better I am all about this.

oblio 13y ago
The personal license (aka a person owns it, not a company) is €179. From time to time they have huge discounts - they had a Black Friday discount of 75%. Recently there was a 50% discount. Just watch the news on reddit or here :)
- Joeri 13y ago
  Your company can't buy a personal license for you, so you have to pay for it on your own. I first got a pro license of phpstorm at work and liked it so much i got a personal license for my hobby projects. For me the inspections are what make the difference with any other IDE or editor, with the refactoring and code navigation functionality in close pursuit. Phpstorm runs fast enough even on my clunky old atom netbook, and the UI fits on its 1024x600 screen.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I've just finished building my first proper Android app. I've built simpler things before but this was the first one that took significant development time. I would guess that about 20% of my time was spent debugging and fighting Eclipse. I thought Xcode sucked but it looked flawless compared with eclipse. Freezes, crashes, multiple emulators launching and none of them actually running the app. Errors in my code that weren't actually errors and were fixed through rebooting Eclipse. If Google can make Android Studio good it's huge news for Android development.

tomjen3 13y ago

Download link?

Macsenour 13y ago
I was looking for that too. Prolly later in I/O we'll see it and someone will post it here.
dotpavan 13y ago
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

ttrreeww 13y ago

They finally ditched that horrible thing called Eclipse!

slg 13y ago

I am excited for this. In my mind the importance of having a simple and targeted IDE can't be overstated. The best part of developing in C# or Objective C is Visual Studio and Xcode. Hopefully this does for Android development what those IDEs do for their respective platforms.

emehrkay 13y ago

I havent kept up with Android development much, but have they addressed the simulation and UI building issues (when compared to IOS or Windows Phone development tools)?

myko 13y ago
> have they addressed the simulation and UI building issues I don't know what UI building issues you're referring to but the intel based emulators run very quickly and I have no problems using them. Though I still prefer testing directly on hardware, for different form factors that isn't always an option.
- emehrkay 13y ago
  I just remember some of my old co-workers who were developing cross-platform mobile apps complaining about how difficult it was to do UI stuff on Android compared to IOS/Winphone. It looks like they have addressed those concerns though http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333534/google-android-studio http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333534/google-android-stu...
mtgx 13y ago
Android does emulation not simulation.

6thSigma 13y ago

I switched to IntelliJ from Eclipse for Android development a few months ago. Best decision I've ever made.

airlocksoftware 13y ago

I've been developing Android apps for a couple of years now. On my machine, Eclipse degenerated to the point where building and running an app would lock up my machine for about a minute. So I made the switch to IntelliJ. It's been great so far, much more responsive. But there have been a few Android tools from Eclipse (the layout preview is worse in IntelliJ) that I've missed. So I'm insanely excited that the Android team is going to be building off of IntelliJ now. The next thing I'm waiting for is the new, Gradle based, build system. http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system

ichinaski 13y ago

Now I only need a VI plugin for this IDE.

fly2never 13y ago
ideavim is your friend
- brightsize 13y ago
  That is fantastic, thanks! Idea just became my default IDE.

smackfu 13y ago

Is Eclipse worse or something when doing Android dev? It seems just fine to me doing normal Java dev, but to hear people talk it is the worst IDE ever invented.

rubinelli 13y ago
It's much of the same, really. You'll only notice you are doing Android development when you debug and it starts an emulator instead of a Swing app or web server.
tracker1 13y ago
Given I've had a lot more experience with the FlexBuilder fork than mainline Eclipse, I always found it incredibly frustrating compared to VS. Now, VS doesn't have all the features that are in other IDEs, but getting out of the gate is downright painful by comparison. I've used WebStorm (also based on IntelliJ) for NodeJS dev, and like it a lot. I still like VS more, but VS is so slow and buggy by comparison, it's hard to use these days. So I can imagine that this new variant will be very useful, and far better than Eclipse for the same work. YMMV of course.
pjmlp 13y ago
I hate its workspace concept with passion. Most IDEs just use some kind of project file, or are able to use directly build tools. But Eclipse always has to create this workspace full of metadata that it likes to corrupt every now and then!
- smackfu 13y ago
  True, I definitely agree with that. Especially how working with multiple workspaces has to be handled outside of Eclipse, via shortcuts or something.
- andrewcooke 13y ago
  you can specify the workspace locn at startup (with -d iirc) so with an alias and/or some bash scripting you can use a separate workspace for each project (I have my projects in ~/proj as subdirs with commands to select which is current - although I only use eclipse for c dev work, intellij idea for java + python). also, use a separate build tool (eg ant) and don't store build info in eclipse (basically, use as default a config as possible and "import from" the build tool). then if you do need to start from scratch you lose very little (and don't add the eclipse metadata to git).

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rozap 13y ago

This is exciting. My biggest headaches with Android stem entirely from Eclipse.

musashibaka 13y ago

I would not be surprised if Google now acquires Jetbrains.

warrenmiller 13y ago

Is this to replace Eclipse or just be an option?

BaconJuice 13y ago
I think they will switch to this but Eclipse will always be option.

mikestew 13y ago

This could be what pushes me to start Android development. I just traded one of my spare iPhone 4s for a Galaxy Nexus, and started to dig into dev. But from my admittedly brief foray, it looked like a lot more fiddling than I cared to undertake right now. Sure, I use a combination of vim, xcodebuild, and a small bit of Xcode now, but if Xcode didn't exist as an IDE when I started iOS/Mac dev I wonder how far I would've gotten. As soon as the download link for the Android IDE is published, I'll be taking a concerted look into it.

madoublet 13y ago

The BIG question in my mind is: will this work on ChromeOS?

joeblossom 13y ago
Doubtful, given it is not web-based. edit: There is nothing definitively saying it is not web-based, but I do feel as if that would be a big talking point when they first introduced it if it were.
koalaman 13y ago
no.
JasonFruit 13y ago
I don't mean to jump on you personally, but your question is typical of something I don't understand: why do so many people seem to want to do desktop-type things on ChromeOS? It's not meant for that kind of work, and there are plenty of other OSs that are.

sivanmz 13y ago

This is encouraging news. I hope the rest of the industry catches on to IntelliJ tooling. Being offered Eclipse/Netbeans tools is the equivalent of getting a Dell laptop for work.

OrsenPike 13y ago

Any word on if this will be free or paid?

BaconJuice 13y ago
This is based off the Free Community Edition from InteliJ so I think it will remain free like Eclipse.

guelo 13y ago

The news is that they're switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ as the base for the Android tools. The demo didn't really show too much that was new, today's Eclipse tools can show multiple screen form factors and languages just like in the demo.

Jare 13y ago

Many of us game devs use C++ for performance and especially cross-platform support, so I am very interested in seeing how NDK support turns out in this. Debugging native code in particular has always been a pain point even for people who don't hate Eclipse.

DTanner 13y ago
This will be make or break for me as well. I'm able to code C++ with Visual Studio (and Visual Assist X) and compile it directly in the IDE with vs-android. The only thing that could make be switch over would be a robust NDK debugger.
- corysama 13y ago
  Try Nsight Tegra VStudio. https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-tegra https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-tegra It's still rough and hampered by ndk's buggy gdb. But when it works it's beautiful! Visual Studio stepping between java and C++!!
yareally 13y ago
Intellij is working on upcoming support for C/C++[1] (one of their things they joked about on April 1st coming true) so I imagine it will take advantage of that or Google is working with them on it. [1] http://blog.jetbrains.com/objc/2013/04/c-ide-an-april-fools-day-joke/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/objc/2013/04/c-ide-an-april-fools-...

sergiotapia 13y ago

They're making it similar to developing Windows Phone applications, but in some ways even better! The live preview of different layouts is FANTASTIC! I'm super excited!

miles 13y ago

Early access preview available now: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

Felix21 13y ago
THANK YOU
sondh 13y ago
Just a head up: you will need to edit the configuration to run on device (the default only launches on AVD). Took me a while to figure that out.

jimmy_wobbles 13y ago

At last! Eclipse sucks...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jonstjohn 13y ago

Looks great, too bad it won't even launch for me on Windows 7. Anybody else running into problems running it?

omegote 13y ago
I was about to post the very same. W7 x64, try to launch the program, execution seems to create a crss.exe -> conhost.exe that hangs indefinitely.
loso 13y ago
Thank you for posting this, I thought I was the only one and was going crazy. It is definitely not working for me on Windows 7 64.
tomh- 13y ago
Doesn't launch in windows 8 either
- tomh- 13y ago
  Try to add a JDK_HOME environment variable which points to your JDK e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_07
gianbasagre 13y ago
Doesn't work on me either. Win 7 64
walid 13y ago
It doesn't launch for me either and the task manager doesn't show a process starting.

Dove 13y ago

The early access preview (http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html) is definitely prettier than Eclipse. Not that that's a high bar to clear. It also seems to be less stable, which is a high bar to clear. ;) Yeah, I know, pre-release software. The windows seem to take a long time to load, too. That strikes me as odd -- it's one thing when you're starting up some sort of interpreter, but several seconds to scan the project directory or open a file? Perhaps that's another pre-release issue. The layout XML editor looks like a big win, though. The syntax awareness, suggestions, documentation access, formatting and just all around general helpfulness seem to be about 1000x better than Eclipse. That alone would make it worth the switch! I think the biggest time sink for me while working on layouts is remembering "what's the darn attribute for..." It's all right there in glorious detail. The realtime WYSIWYG view is . . . cool, I guess. ADT already had that, though you had to switch to a different tab for it. Maybe I'm missing something; it doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. It still doesn't handle custom views, which I use a lot of. (And I mean a lot! Custom container views, too.) And I don't really like feedback while typing, anyway. YMMV, of course, but it looks to me like the big win is the text editor itself, not the graphical display. I've been meaning to get off of Eclipse for a while now, so I'll play with it more and watch how it changes. For now, color me experimental and cautiously optimistic.

p_l 13y ago
The long loading time might be unoptimized-yet parsing of various XML files of ones app. In general, it's mostly an evolutionary work on existing IntelliJ Android plugin. The View editor afaik has some support for custom views, but only some - it's rather iffy (IntelliJ Android view renderer simply used Android libs to render them, but of course that doesn't work for everything, and anything fully programmatic is dead anyway). Fwiw, IntelliJ's XML editor was always much better at not freaking out at the fact that you haven't finished writing that new tag so of course your view doesn't validate (something that was a constant for me back when I used Eclipse). The editors in general are standard for IntelliJ, with some nifty transformations added - the XML string example reminds me of how IntelliJ dynamically renders certain idioms into Java 8 forms while still keeping the code in 1.6 (well, that's how I have it configured, that is). In general, it's nice, I hope it will be available as plugin into plain old IntelliJ as well.

m_ke 13y ago

IntelliJ also just released IDEA 13 preview with all of the features. http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IDEADEV/IDEA+13+EAP http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IDEADEV/IDEA+13+EAP

krisc 13y ago

I've done one Android app for a college project using Eclipse a couple years ago. I've been wanting to get back into developing for the platform. Anyone have an opinion on a novice Android developer trying out an early access preview for this IDE?

rdemmer 13y ago

JetBrains Company Blog gives details on Android Studio: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-t...

dodyg 13y ago

The great thing about Android Studio based on IntelliJ is that Kotlin plugin should work with no or minimal change to work there.

BrandonSmith 13y ago

Android Studio, at present, embeds Eclipse... ./sdk/tools/lib/monitor-x86_64/ This seems to be the DDMS view of the Eclipse ADT.

booop 13y ago

While I'm quite excited about this, I'm surprised by all the hatred for eclipse in this thread. I develop in Java for both fun and profit using eclipse and it's been running solid ever since I followed the tips given in this SO thread (esp putting the jvm in a ramdisk) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up-eclipse http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up.... Perhaps those whose sole complaint with eclipse is its performance should try some of those suggestions.

netcraft 13y ago
Those are good suggestions that can make a difference, but if you haven't tried IntelliJ you really should. I used eclipse for years. Wish I could get those years back now. Eclipse is great, but IntelliJ is better.
- booop 13y ago
  Okay, I've been using it since yesterday and I think it's _amazing_.

sigzero 13y ago

Anything to not use eclipse!

dsaber 13y ago

This is definitely awesome. I look forward to the stable release and moving away from Eclipse. Does anyone know if Android Studio will also be available as a plug-in for people who already have IntelliJ installed? I'm not too keen on having multiple versions of the same IDEs, that I have to each customize and maintain.

dsaber 13y ago
This post answered my question: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-t... "You can see the updated Android support in the Early Access Preview of IntelliJ IDEA v13 that is opened today...This EAP build includes all of the new features of Android Studio except for the new project wizard and the AppEngine cloud endpoints integration. These latter features will also appear in our EAP builds in the coming weeks."

programminggeek 13y ago

This is easily the most exciting thing to happen to Android developers in a long time. I am super jazzed.

catmanjan 13y ago

It doesn't seem to run on Windows 64-bit, here's the fix: http://www.twosquared.com.au/blog/6 http://www.twosquared.com.au/blog/6

georgemcbay 13y ago

Eclipse is a constant source of small annoyances for me, none of which by itself is a huge deal but when taken together color my view of the editor negatively. Unfortunately, switching to Android Studio presents a different set of issues, like lack of Perforce integration (using Perforce is out of my control here, unfortunately). I'd assume some sort of hybrid Android Studio/IDEA setup is possible, but even still the Pro version of IDEA that I would seemingly need to get any Perforce integration working is priced at a point ($499 and up) where I'm not sure I could make a justification for the purchase. Eclipse kinda sucks, but it also mostly works and the perforce integration on it is free (and also quite good, I have no idea if IDEA's is any good). I could, of course, just eschew IDE/VCS integration, but editor integration is, in my experience, kind of a big deal with Perforce because of the rather old-school model it uses of checkouts. It becomes really annoying to merge code in if you don't preemptively check things out before you change them, and having the IDE manage this by just checking things out when you first start editing them is a huge win. Pseudo-ironically, if the VCS I used were any of the ones Android Studio/IDEA gives you for free having support for it in the IDE would be less of a big deal for me, I'd just do all the VCS stuff at the command line.

werkshy 13y ago
I don't get it. Perforce is ~$200/seat/year. IDEA at $500 seems like a no-brainer compared to limping on with Eclipse.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  I work at a company that mandates Perforce for political reasons and getting budget for a $500 purchase when I can't reasonably articulate the benefits over the free thing we've been using all this time would be an uphill battle that I'm honestly not sure is worth it, because while I find Eclipse annoying I don't have enough experience with IDEA to know that it is not annoying in a different set of ways. I suppose I will try the 30 day demo of IDEA and see if it is worth fighting for, but probably not until Android Studio is more baked because I've played around with it enough to know that the 0.1 designation is warranted at this time.

dinofile 13y ago

Well after the 300MB download, I tried to create a hello world project on fully updated Mac 10.8.3 and my friend on a Windows 7 machine. Punch in a project name and go. Failed on both. Preview or not, you don't expect such dribble from Google. Mac error was: Can't register given path of type 'SOURCE' because it's out of content root. Windows error was: (After env var fix) "There must not already be a project at this location" and would not let a new one be created. If they can't test enough to guarantee basic project creation on stock standard OS's they shouldn't release it.

chetanahuja 13y ago

Lately I've been forced to use eclipse for Android development to create a demo app for our technology(* ). The general lack of responsiveness of the UI was so annoying that I basically took to doing all my editing in emacs and just manually refreshing eclipse windows for UI changes, build and DDMS views for debugging. A lot of my development is C/C++ code (NDK build) which I'm doing completely in emacs anyway, it mostly worked out for me. Can someone who has experience in IntelliJ tell me how well it might support a workflow involving an external editor ? Basically I'm trying to decide whether it's worth investing the time to switch over for my use-case. Many thanks in advance for an informative answer. (* ) for this -> packetzoom.com

namuol 13y ago

And here I thought I'd regret switching to IDEA due to the lack of official Google support. How serendipitous.

watermel0n 13y ago

Anyone that needs a color scheme, here is mine https://github.com/prignano/Obsidian2-IntelliJ-Android-Studio https://github.com/prignano/Obsidian2-IntelliJ-Android-Studi... already tested on Android Studio.

chj 13y ago

I was excited (tired of Eclipse), but after a test run, I think it is still slow, and still lack of native code debugging that just works, as in xcode.

praterade 13y ago

Does no one see that this is an obvious transition to make a proprietary Android dev environment? Sure, Eclipse can be a little buggy, but it's FREE. I'd rather take a free, third party IDE over something that will just push Google closer to world domination.