10 ms·

IntelliJ IDEA 13 Brings a Full Bag of Goodies to Android Developers

147 points by rdemmer 13y ago

btipling 13y ago
Version 13 is very awesome. We've been finishing our intellij plugin and are so close to having it be usable that it could be user ready in like 2 days which will be awesome because then I can spend more time using the new intellij. I'm also glad they fixed the git colors in the Darkula theme.
zidar 13y ago
I am confused about how the IntelliJ IDEA with android plugins competes with Android Studio. I thought that Android Studio is suppose to replace IntellyJ for android development.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  Android Studio is a fork of the OSS IDEA by Google. IntelliJ IDEA is the version released by the actual company and is not affiliated with Google.
  - rdemmer 13y ago
    IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio FAQ: http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg Q: Is Android Studio a fork of IntelliJ IDEA? A: No. Android Studio and the Android plugin for IntelliJ IDEA are built from the same code, and all of the changes in Android Studio are, and will continue to be, available in IntelliJ IDEA releases.
    - RyanZAG 13y ago
      It's a fork in the sense that it's a fork of the IntelliJ repo with Google/Android related assets added. So it's more of a branding fork than a code fork, but since its in a different repo I'd still call it a fork. But it's just terminology I guess.
      - chinpokomon 13y ago
        But that ships with IntelliJ IDEA, so it isn't a fork. Android Studio is a subset of IDEA 13.
- 67726e 13y ago
  Android Studio is built off of the codebase[0] from IntelliJ 13. The JetBrains products like RubyMine, WebStorm, and seem to be built off of the same core IDE with plugins for languages/platforms and features. So most of the functionality is really just in plugins, and of course IntelliJ probably offers additional Android development functionality for a price. [0] http://www.jetbrains.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=983211 http://www.jetbrains.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=983211
- rdemmer 13y ago
  These resources might help: IntelliJ IDEA is the base for Android Studio, the new IDE for Android developers: http://bit.ly/1jN1bgb http://bit.ly/1jN1bgb IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio FAQ: http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg
whizzkid 13y ago
I wish, they would have a free and lightweight version of the IDEA, so i could use it instead of Sublime Text.
- computer 13y ago
  You mean the open-source community edition that actually exists?
  - whizzkid 13y ago
    Not really actually. With the free community edition, you only get to manage "java" which doesn't work for me since i work with different programming languages with lots of front-end stuff as well. I meant to use it from editing xml, css, html to configure tomcat settings for example. On the other hand, i totally understand that they want people to buy it for fully featured version.
    - jebblue 13y ago
      Eclipse is fully featured and professional and free as in beer and software.
      - peeters 13y ago
        "Fully featured" is not a binary condition. If Eclipse is fully featured for Java development, IDEA is much MORE fully featured.
    - peteorpeter 13y ago
      IntelliJ is indeed java-centric (and not light-weight), but the front-end coding environment is top-notch. I've tried going back to a light-weight text editor (I'm still a sucker for TextMate) but I always come back to IntelliJ. The code completion for HTML/JS/CSS is phenomenal, and the way it intelligently switches syntax highlighting schemes regardless of filetype cuts down on my numerous, numerous typos (for example, if in app.html you write <div style="foo:bar" onclick="foo('bar')"></div>, the HTML, CSS, and JS components will all be syntax-highlighted appropriately). It's also great for XML. (I also happen to work on an app with a Java backend so it's a no-brainer, and the company's paying for the software...) EDIT: Just realized you were referring only to the CE, which I've not used. I'll leave this here as a _non-sequiter_ opinion on the paid version nonetheless.
Omnipresent 13y ago
Other than "multi device preview" I think Android studio has all the features that IDEA13 offers for android developers. IntelliJ is great and I do all my Java/Groovy based development from it, but I'm not sure about buying the license just to go upgrade to 13
- krschultz 13y ago
  The Sqlite debugger is also IDEA13 only I believe.
  - biafra 13y ago
    Isn't that the thing that requires the Ultimate Edition? That's why it is not in Android Studio.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - yareally 13y ago
      Database support has always been an Ultimate Edition only feature. However, nothing prevents someone from building their own plugin. For example, there's a third party one for MySQL that's fairly popular.
- yareally 13y ago
  Android Studio is basically the community edition of Intellij, but I would consider it to be more stable.
coldtea 13y ago
Want to like IDEA, but using a Java (Swing) based UI, in both Mac and Windows, makes me always feel like when someones scraps a blackboard with his nails. I could live with Eclipse though, despite SWT being also quite removed from the native experience. At least it had bloody native text boxes and scrollbars and such.
- Omnipresent 13y ago
  I had that feeling using eclipse and netbeans for years before switching over to IntelliJ.
  - RivieraKid 13y ago
    What OS do you use? Because Swing is especially shitty on Linux, so I simply can't switch.
    - Omnipresent 13y ago
      Ah yeah. It looked really bad on my ubuntu box. Moving to OSX was a help
      - rdemmer 13y ago
        Maybe have a look here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6840935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6840935
- afsina 13y ago
  Trust me it has less issues than SWT. Such as https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=13819 https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=13819
  - jebblue 13y ago
    The global menu was a bad move on the part of Canonical in Ubuntu's Unity desktop. I don't even use it or that ridiculous scroll bar. I keep those packages removed on my systems so my Unity experience is closer to Gnome and Eclipse and other GUIs that had issues with those UI elements also fair much better. Either way, that has to do more with issues in Unity than in SWT. What SWT accomplished is amazing: http://www.eclipse.org/swt/ http://www.eclipse.org/swt/
bakerba 13y ago
Does the Android Studio canary build get new features before IntelliJ?
hallucinating 13y ago
I just recently started doing some Java development (despite vowing never to again), and one of the reasons I'm kinda cool with it is Intellij. Intellij makes it way easier. Things just work (subversion, Spring, hot swap).
- jebblue 13y ago
  >> Things just work (subversion, Spring, hot swap). The same has been true for me in Eclipse for over 8 years.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago
    Two things that do not "just work" first drove me away from Eclipse: a) git integration. Egit is bad and barely functional. I ended up abandoning it and doing all my git interaction at the command line. I rarely need the git command line with IDEA. b) Maven integration. We use a custom Maven setup that I could never get Eclipse to work properly with; it insisted on using a stock setup that could not build our projects. IDEA's Maven support just works; I run the Maven goal from the sidebar and it runs in IDEA just like I typed "mvn <rule>" at the command line. I still use Eclipse for C and C++ development, but I will probably abandon it for even that soon. I have just never been able to get into Code::Blocks.
    - eeperson 13y ago
      Weird, I have the exact opposite feeling about git integration. I'm okay with the Egit functionality but I always use the command line with IntelliJ because the git support gives you no way to interact with git's staging area.
    - Sindisil 13y ago
      If you love IDEA, you may well get the chance to use it for C & C++ soonish, as well, since they're working on a C & C++ IDE now. Hopefully it really will be good for vanilla C - I have an aversion to C++, and little need for that support. The lack of native development is one of the main things keeping me from giving IDEA a proper try. It may well be better than NetBeans, but NetBeans works well now, and has decent C & C++ support (at least as good as CDT, anyway). I do have a personal license for IDEA 12, and would have no problem paying for an upgrade to 13 - it's just not worth my time (yet) to do so. There are a few annoying bugs I've run into in NetBeans 7.4, and Android dev isn't awesome in NetBeans, so maybe there'll be enough impetus for me to give IDEA a real shot soonish. Or the NetBeans bugs will get fixed, and I'll just stick tight. I'm happy either way!
Chico75 13y ago
Is the gradle support really better than in IDEA Community Edition? Sure I can open the gradle.build file and edit it with syntax colorization but there is no smart auto-completion: you always see a giant list of objects, and not all of them are available.
- justafucker 13y ago
  The Gradle support is a part of Community Edition. Code completion should be available for dependencies and plugins (available in the Maven central). I've seen a few cases when there were no completion for the artifacts from the local Android repository. It will be fixed shortly.
swanson 13y ago
The only feature that really excites me is the Gradle support. Things like the 9patch editor seem horribly misplaced (you probably don't want your devs to be editing those...) and others seem so situational (the autocompleting sdk version - a one line config value that you set once per project). Android Studio is not really usable as an IDE if you want to have a fully featured test suite because of the weird, half-implemented Gradle "auto-sync" magic (http://www.sep.com/sep-blog/2013/10/17/android-studio-not-ready-for-primetime/ http://www.sep.com/sep-blog/2013/10/17/android-studio-not-re...). Until then, it's still good ole' reliable Eclipse (I can't believe I just said that). Until a different IDE can support Robolectric and Robotium/Instrumentation tests in the same projct that can be run/debugged inside the tool and report results in a window (command line and html test reports don't count, sorry), I won't be switching.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  Weird, I know we have Robotium and Robolectric working fine in Android Studio at work. Although some versions do require a separate project, most versions are just sub-projects under a main folder with a shared build.gradle now. Not than any of us want to use it. You are just forced to if you want to use the latest features like AARs with Gradle. Eclipse is unfortunately obsolete and incapable of handling the latest stuff, even though we all used it for years and prefer it.
  - swanson 13y ago
    Last I checked (October) I could not get the build.gradle to play nicely. Most of the other material online involved using instrumentCompile to trick Android Studio into running your unit tests and a custom runner/plugin: https://github.com/JakeWharton/gradle-android-test-plugin https://github.com/JakeWharton/gradle-android-test-plugin If you have gotten it working in Android Studio, I'd be very keen to see how (if you are willing to share).
    - ch0wn 13y ago
      I'd also be very interested in learning how to set up Android Studio to run Robolectric. Especially sinceone of the last releases removed the option to mark custom directories as test folders, so tat I now can't even use any Java features in the editor.
rogerthis 13y ago
The XML code formatter (shilf+alt+L) is very strange. Maybe bugged. Eclipse does a better work. E.g. http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-103320 http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-103320
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
xinkr 13y ago
Does anyone know a good software to create these kind of "screenshot gif"? I know my question is not directly related to the content of the article..
- larve 13y ago
  LiceCap is a great tool, and opensource: http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/
  - boobsbr 13y ago
    What a terrible name for a project.
levosmetalo 13y ago
After trying to use Android Studio with its Gradle integration behind a company firewall that requires all outside network access through the proxy, I just gave up and went back to Eclipse, where everything just works. Diving through different configuration options was just to painful to put up with.
- fridek 13y ago
  Personally I think "doesn't work like Eclipse" is a good thing. If you don't mind trying again go to http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/documentation/migration_faq.html http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/documentation/migration_faq.ht... first. You will also find CTRL+SHIFT+A combo useful - it's a fast search of settings/actions. Properly set IntelliJ will boost your productivity many times. It's just an investment if you migrate from other IDE. I like to think about it as something similar to migration from crappy unit testing solution to a better one - it just pays off after some time.
eranation 13y ago
Has anyone tried using Kotlin for Android development? (it's supposed to be lower runtime footprint than Scala, and it is officially supported by Jetbrains [1]) [1] http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2013/08/working-with-kotlin-in-android-studio/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2013/08/working-with-kotlin...
- ajselvig 13y ago
  Kotlin works well for Android development. The annotations have gotten better recently, too, so you can interact with Android classes without too many null checks.
jareds 13y ago
I really hope the Gradle support is ported to Eclipse and that the Eclipse Android tools are actively maintained. I tried Android Studio but it’s completely inaccessible with my screen reading software. Since it is based off IDEA I assume I would run into the same problem trying to use the new version so haven’t bothered.
dkhenry 13y ago
I really want to like Intellij since it is so much more responsive then Eclipse, but I can't for the life of me get a working scala set up in IDEA or in the community version. Eclipse might still be a bit of a sloutch, but it works.
- TelmoMenezes 13y ago
  In my experience the problem is usually sbt related. I found IntelliJ to work great with scala+Maven.
- dsaber 13y ago
  What issues are you facing exactly? I've been successfully developing Scala apps since IntelliJ 12 with no issues. It's leaps and bounds better than Eclipse. One thing to note that for sbt-based projects, I recommend generating the IntelliJ project from https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea
  - dkhenry 13y ago
    Getting it to work with SBT. Even generating the project with sbt idea I still can't get it to compile correctly. And I still haven't been able to get it attach a debugger. I think the current issue is with SBT 0.13 which isn't supported by them right now.
    - dsaber 13y ago
      I'm using SBT 0.13 on a fairly complex project. Not sure why it wouldn't work for you. What kind of project is it? Any specific frameworks you're using that are causing compilation errors?
      - dkhenry 13y ago
        Play2 pulling it in via SBT resolution so I don't have it "installed" on my development machine.
octix 13y ago
The more comments about IntelliJ IDEA I read, the more it reminds me of apple fans... It's just a tool and not a miracle! But hey, everyone is special and has the right to opinion, right? :)
- tlarkworthy 13y ago
  coding is our jobs. The IDE is our primary interface. Of course its important. Its much more of a vital decision than what looks good (apple fans), its about what gets the most real work done. Look at vim Vs. emacs for a better analogy.
  - octix 13y ago
    What are you talking about? I use IDE everyday and I'm not questioning the importance of IDEs, i'm questioning the fan base :) All I'm saying is that the whole "it's worth paying extra", "it's so much better and productive", "it has so many features"... is just bs... IMHO. Use right tool for the job and be open minded, that's all. If I have to switch to go lang tomorrow, should I start complain, whine and wait for IDEA for go or just do whatever I have to do? And you cannot compare vim vs. emacs anology with this one, since hey both are free and open source, however IDEA is just a good commercial product, but not a silver bullet, that's all.
    - hatchoo 13y ago
      I don't think there will ever be silver bullets. :) IntelliJ has a community version with the source posted over at GitHub. They also have a flavor for Python which recently had an open source version released. But as you said, to each his own.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    >Its much more of a vital decision than what looks good (apple fans), its about what gets the most real work done. Jeez, talk about responding to a fallacy with a fallacy...
omarkatzen 13y ago
I'd like to try an IDE, since I usually end up using vim due to the fact that my projects often mix languages (Python, C, Clojure, occasionally Scala). How do Intellij, LightTable, SublimeText, etc. perform on those sorts of polyglot projects?
trollingineer 13y ago
Thank God for IntelliJ because Eclipse is the biggest steaming pile of shit excuse for an IDE. I'm really glad Google is ditching Eclipse as the go-to IDE in favor of the IntelliJ-based Android Studio. Good riddance.

147 points by rdemmer 13y ago

Version 13 is very awesome. We've been finishing our intellij plugin and are so close to having it be usable that it could be user ready in like 2 days which will be awesome because then I can spend more time using the new intellij. I'm also glad they fixed the git colors in the Darkula theme.

zidar 13y ago

I am confused about how the IntelliJ IDEA with android plugins competes with Android Studio. I thought that Android Studio is suppose to replace IntellyJ for android development.

RyanZAG 13y ago
Android Studio is a fork of the OSS IDEA by Google. IntelliJ IDEA is the version released by the actual company and is not affiliated with Google.
- rdemmer 13y ago
  IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio FAQ: http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg Q: Is Android Studio a fork of IntelliJ IDEA? A: No. Android Studio and the Android plugin for IntelliJ IDEA are built from the same code, and all of the changes in Android Studio are, and will continue to be, available in IntelliJ IDEA releases.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    It's a fork in the sense that it's a fork of the IntelliJ repo with Google/Android related assets added. So it's more of a branding fork than a code fork, but since its in a different repo I'd still call it a fork. But it's just terminology I guess.
    - chinpokomon 13y ago
      But that ships with IntelliJ IDEA, so it isn't a fork. Android Studio is a subset of IDEA 13.
67726e 13y ago
Android Studio is built off of the codebase[0] from IntelliJ 13. The JetBrains products like RubyMine, WebStorm, and seem to be built off of the same core IDE with plugins for languages/platforms and features. So most of the functionality is really just in plugins, and of course IntelliJ probably offers additional Android development functionality for a price. [0] http://www.jetbrains.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=983211 http://www.jetbrains.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=983211
rdemmer 13y ago
These resources might help: IntelliJ IDEA is the base for Android Studio, the new IDE for Android developers: http://bit.ly/1jN1bgb http://bit.ly/1jN1bgb IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio FAQ: http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg http://bit.ly/1d7U0Kg

whizzkid 13y ago

I wish, they would have a free and lightweight version of the IDEA, so i could use it instead of Sublime Text.

computer 13y ago
You mean the open-source community edition that actually exists?
- whizzkid 13y ago
  Not really actually. With the free community edition, you only get to manage "java" which doesn't work for me since i work with different programming languages with lots of front-end stuff as well. I meant to use it from editing xml, css, html to configure tomcat settings for example. On the other hand, i totally understand that they want people to buy it for fully featured version.
  - jebblue 13y ago
    Eclipse is fully featured and professional and free as in beer and software.
    - peeters 13y ago
      "Fully featured" is not a binary condition. If Eclipse is fully featured for Java development, IDEA is much MORE fully featured.
  - peteorpeter 13y ago
    IntelliJ is indeed java-centric (and not light-weight), but the front-end coding environment is top-notch. I've tried going back to a light-weight text editor (I'm still a sucker for TextMate) but I always come back to IntelliJ. The code completion for HTML/JS/CSS is phenomenal, and the way it intelligently switches syntax highlighting schemes regardless of filetype cuts down on my numerous, numerous typos (for example, if in app.html you write <div style="foo:bar" onclick="foo('bar')"></div>, the HTML, CSS, and JS components will all be syntax-highlighted appropriately). It's also great for XML. (I also happen to work on an app with a Java backend so it's a no-brainer, and the company's paying for the software...) EDIT: Just realized you were referring only to the CE, which I've not used. I'll leave this here as a _non-sequiter_ opinion on the paid version nonetheless.

Omnipresent 13y ago

Other than "multi device preview" I think Android studio has all the features that IDEA13 offers for android developers. IntelliJ is great and I do all my Java/Groovy based development from it, but I'm not sure about buying the license just to go upgrade to 13

krschultz 13y ago
The Sqlite debugger is also IDEA13 only I believe.
- biafra 13y ago
  Isn't that the thing that requires the Ultimate Edition? That's why it is not in Android Studio.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - yareally 13y ago
    Database support has always been an Ultimate Edition only feature. However, nothing prevents someone from building their own plugin. For example, there's a third party one for MySQL that's fairly popular.
yareally 13y ago
Android Studio is basically the community edition of Intellij, but I would consider it to be more stable.

coldtea 13y ago

Want to like IDEA, but using a Java (Swing) based UI, in both Mac and Windows, makes me always feel like when someones scraps a blackboard with his nails. I could live with Eclipse though, despite SWT being also quite removed from the native experience. At least it had bloody native text boxes and scrollbars and such.

Omnipresent 13y ago
I had that feeling using eclipse and netbeans for years before switching over to IntelliJ.
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  What OS do you use? Because Swing is especially shitty on Linux, so I simply can't switch.
  - Omnipresent 13y ago
    Ah yeah. It looked really bad on my ubuntu box. Moving to OSX was a help
    - rdemmer 13y ago
      Maybe have a look here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6840935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6840935
afsina 13y ago
Trust me it has less issues than SWT. Such as https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=13819 https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=13819
- jebblue 13y ago
  The global menu was a bad move on the part of Canonical in Ubuntu's Unity desktop. I don't even use it or that ridiculous scroll bar. I keep those packages removed on my systems so my Unity experience is closer to Gnome and Eclipse and other GUIs that had issues with those UI elements also fair much better. Either way, that has to do more with issues in Unity than in SWT. What SWT accomplished is amazing: http://www.eclipse.org/swt/ http://www.eclipse.org/swt/

bakerba 13y ago

Does the Android Studio canary build get new features before IntelliJ?

hallucinating 13y ago

I just recently started doing some Java development (despite vowing never to again), and one of the reasons I'm kinda cool with it is Intellij. Intellij makes it way easier. Things just work (subversion, Spring, hot swap).

jebblue 13y ago
>> Things just work (subversion, Spring, hot swap). The same has been true for me in Eclipse for over 8 years.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  Two things that do not "just work" first drove me away from Eclipse: a) git integration. Egit is bad and barely functional. I ended up abandoning it and doing all my git interaction at the command line. I rarely need the git command line with IDEA. b) Maven integration. We use a custom Maven setup that I could never get Eclipse to work properly with; it insisted on using a stock setup that could not build our projects. IDEA's Maven support just works; I run the Maven goal from the sidebar and it runs in IDEA just like I typed "mvn <rule>" at the command line. I still use Eclipse for C and C++ development, but I will probably abandon it for even that soon. I have just never been able to get into Code::Blocks.
  - eeperson 13y ago
    Weird, I have the exact opposite feeling about git integration. I'm okay with the Egit functionality but I always use the command line with IntelliJ because the git support gives you no way to interact with git's staging area.
  - Sindisil 13y ago
    If you love IDEA, you may well get the chance to use it for C & C++ soonish, as well, since they're working on a C & C++ IDE now. Hopefully it really will be good for vanilla C - I have an aversion to C++, and little need for that support. The lack of native development is one of the main things keeping me from giving IDEA a proper try. It may well be better than NetBeans, but NetBeans works well now, and has decent C & C++ support (at least as good as CDT, anyway). I do have a personal license for IDEA 12, and would have no problem paying for an upgrade to 13 - it's just not worth my time (yet) to do so. There are a few annoying bugs I've run into in NetBeans 7.4, and Android dev isn't awesome in NetBeans, so maybe there'll be enough impetus for me to give IDEA a real shot soonish. Or the NetBeans bugs will get fixed, and I'll just stick tight. I'm happy either way!

Chico75 13y ago

Is the gradle support really better than in IDEA Community Edition? Sure I can open the gradle.build file and edit it with syntax colorization but there is no smart auto-completion: you always see a giant list of objects, and not all of them are available.

justafucker 13y ago
The Gradle support is a part of Community Edition. Code completion should be available for dependencies and plugins (available in the Maven central). I've seen a few cases when there were no completion for the artifacts from the local Android repository. It will be fixed shortly.

swanson 13y ago

The only feature that really excites me is the Gradle support. Things like the 9patch editor seem horribly misplaced (you probably don't want your devs to be editing those...) and others seem so situational (the autocompleting sdk version - a one line config value that you set once per project). Android Studio is not really usable as an IDE if you want to have a fully featured test suite because of the weird, half-implemented Gradle "auto-sync" magic (http://www.sep.com/sep-blog/2013/10/17/android-studio-not-ready-for-primetime/ http://www.sep.com/sep-blog/2013/10/17/android-studio-not-re...). Until then, it's still good ole' reliable Eclipse (I can't believe I just said that). Until a different IDE can support Robolectric and Robotium/Instrumentation tests in the same projct that can be run/debugged inside the tool and report results in a window (command line and html test reports don't count, sorry), I won't be switching.

lnanek2 13y ago
Weird, I know we have Robotium and Robolectric working fine in Android Studio at work. Although some versions do require a separate project, most versions are just sub-projects under a main folder with a shared build.gradle now. Not than any of us want to use it. You are just forced to if you want to use the latest features like AARs with Gradle. Eclipse is unfortunately obsolete and incapable of handling the latest stuff, even though we all used it for years and prefer it.
- swanson 13y ago
  Last I checked (October) I could not get the build.gradle to play nicely. Most of the other material online involved using instrumentCompile to trick Android Studio into running your unit tests and a custom runner/plugin: https://github.com/JakeWharton/gradle-android-test-plugin https://github.com/JakeWharton/gradle-android-test-plugin If you have gotten it working in Android Studio, I'd be very keen to see how (if you are willing to share).
  - ch0wn 13y ago
    I'd also be very interested in learning how to set up Android Studio to run Robolectric. Especially sinceone of the last releases removed the option to mark custom directories as test folders, so tat I now can't even use any Java features in the editor.

rogerthis 13y ago

The XML code formatter (shilf+alt+L) is very strange. Maybe bugged. Eclipse does a better work. E.g. http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-103320 http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-103320

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

xinkr 13y ago

Does anyone know a good software to create these kind of "screenshot gif"? I know my question is not directly related to the content of the article..

larve 13y ago
LiceCap is a great tool, and opensource: http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/
- boobsbr 13y ago
  What a terrible name for a project.

levosmetalo 13y ago

After trying to use Android Studio with its Gradle integration behind a company firewall that requires all outside network access through the proxy, I just gave up and went back to Eclipse, where everything just works. Diving through different configuration options was just to painful to put up with.

fridek 13y ago
Personally I think "doesn't work like Eclipse" is a good thing. If you don't mind trying again go to http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/documentation/migration_faq.html http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/documentation/migration_faq.ht... first. You will also find CTRL+SHIFT+A combo useful - it's a fast search of settings/actions. Properly set IntelliJ will boost your productivity many times. It's just an investment if you migrate from other IDE. I like to think about it as something similar to migration from crappy unit testing solution to a better one - it just pays off after some time.

eranation 13y ago

Has anyone tried using Kotlin for Android development? (it's supposed to be lower runtime footprint than Scala, and it is officially supported by Jetbrains [1]) [1] http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2013/08/working-with-kotlin-in-android-studio/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2013/08/working-with-kotlin...

ajselvig 13y ago
Kotlin works well for Android development. The annotations have gotten better recently, too, so you can interact with Android classes without too many null checks.

jareds 13y ago

I really hope the Gradle support is ported to Eclipse and that the Eclipse Android tools are actively maintained. I tried Android Studio but it’s completely inaccessible with my screen reading software. Since it is based off IDEA I assume I would run into the same problem trying to use the new version so haven’t bothered.

dkhenry 13y ago

I really want to like Intellij since it is so much more responsive then Eclipse, but I can't for the life of me get a working scala set up in IDEA or in the community version. Eclipse might still be a bit of a sloutch, but it works.

TelmoMenezes 13y ago
In my experience the problem is usually sbt related. I found IntelliJ to work great with scala+Maven.
dsaber 13y ago
What issues are you facing exactly? I've been successfully developing Scala apps since IntelliJ 12 with no issues. It's leaps and bounds better than Eclipse. One thing to note that for sbt-based projects, I recommend generating the IntelliJ project from https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea
- dkhenry 13y ago
  Getting it to work with SBT. Even generating the project with sbt idea I still can't get it to compile correctly. And I still haven't been able to get it attach a debugger. I think the current issue is with SBT 0.13 which isn't supported by them right now.
  - dsaber 13y ago
    I'm using SBT 0.13 on a fairly complex project. Not sure why it wouldn't work for you. What kind of project is it? Any specific frameworks you're using that are causing compilation errors?
    - dkhenry 13y ago
      Play2 pulling it in via SBT resolution so I don't have it "installed" on my development machine.

octix 13y ago

The more comments about IntelliJ IDEA I read, the more it reminds me of apple fans... It's just a tool and not a miracle! But hey, everyone is special and has the right to opinion, right? :)

tlarkworthy 13y ago
coding is our jobs. The IDE is our primary interface. Of course its important. Its much more of a vital decision than what looks good (apple fans), its about what gets the most real work done. Look at vim Vs. emacs for a better analogy.
- octix 13y ago
  What are you talking about? I use IDE everyday and I'm not questioning the importance of IDEs, i'm questioning the fan base :) All I'm saying is that the whole "it's worth paying extra", "it's so much better and productive", "it has so many features"... is just bs... IMHO. Use right tool for the job and be open minded, that's all. If I have to switch to go lang tomorrow, should I start complain, whine and wait for IDEA for go or just do whatever I have to do? And you cannot compare vim vs. emacs anology with this one, since hey both are free and open source, however IDEA is just a good commercial product, but not a silver bullet, that's all.
  - hatchoo 13y ago
    I don't think there will ever be silver bullets. :) IntelliJ has a community version with the source posted over at GitHub. They also have a flavor for Python which recently had an open source version released. But as you said, to each his own.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  >Its much more of a vital decision than what looks good (apple fans), its about what gets the most real work done. Jeez, talk about responding to a fallacy with a fallacy...

omarkatzen 13y ago

I'd like to try an IDE, since I usually end up using vim due to the fact that my projects often mix languages (Python, C, Clojure, occasionally Scala). How do Intellij, LightTable, SublimeText, etc. perform on those sorts of polyglot projects?

trollingineer 13y ago

Thank God for IntelliJ because Eclipse is the biggest steaming pile of shit excuse for an IDE. I'm really glad Google is ditching Eclipse as the go-to IDE in favor of the IntelliJ-based Android Studio. Good riddance.