IntelliJ IDEA and the Android Source tree

It can be quite annoying to develop in the Android source tree if you don't have your IDE properly configured.  I thought I'd share a few notes from my testing IDEA with the repo sync'd tree...

• When initially making your project, make sure it is a fresh checkout or do a 'make clean'.  Otherwise, all the *_intermediates turn into separate modules.

• When it auto-detects the Android Facets, uncheck them all. If the Android Facet is setup, you will resolve classes to android-x.jar instead of your module source.
• It can also auto-generate gen/ directories which cause duplicate R.java clases during builds if the Android Facet is chosen.

• Since we are not using the Android Facets, the R.java files become a problem.  To correct this, create a new module (and make it a dependency of any module needing the resolution):

Content Root: out/target/common/R
Module File Location: anywhere BUT out/*

• You probably are not going to be working on every single module unless you work with Cyanogen.  Right click on a module and add it to your favorites.  In the top of the dock, click the pull down and choose to view your favorites.

• Build from the command line.  You might be able to do it from within the IDE, but I haven't tried that.

Thank you to the JetBrains support team; and a special thanks to Serge Baranov who put up with me long enough to get some of these issues resolved.

Altering system.img, userdata.img and persist.img

If you have started building the Android source tree yourself, you have undoubtedly wondered how to modify the image files.  In this post, we'll look specifically at system.img.  This is based on the work found here.

Let's pretend our directories are:
~/work/android: directory where you did your git, envbuild, lunch/choosecombo from.
~/work/tmp: empty directory for us to play in
~/bin: directory on your path

If you have already done a build, you will find out/target/product/generic/system.img.  This is a YAFFS2 file.

Preparation

In my case, I did not have a way to mount yaffs2 filesystems.  I am sure I could have done some insmods and such; but instead, I chose to just compile this unyaffs.

~/work/tmp$ wget http://unyaffs.googlecode.com/files/unyaffs.c

~/work/tmp$ wget http://unyaffs.googlecode.com/files/unyaffs.h

~/work/tmp$ gcc -o unyaffs unyaffs.c

~/work/tmp$ cp unyaffs ~/bin

~/work/tmp$ rm *

Extracting system.img

~/work/tmp$ cp ~/work/android/out/target/product/generic/system.img .
~/work/tmp$ mkdir tmp2
~/work/tmp$ cd tmp2
~/work/tmp/tmp2$ unyaffs ../system.img

((modify files... for example, etc/init.goldfish.sh))


Rebuilding system.img

~/work/tmp$ rm system.img
~/work/tmp$ ~/work/android/out/host/linux-x86/bin/mkyaffs2image tmp2 system.img

Now you should be able to use the new system.img with your emulator =)


userdata.img and persist.img

These are handled in exactly the same way, just change the filenames.

Altering ramdisk.img

If you have started building the Android source tree yourself, you have undoubtedly wondered how to modify the image files.  In this post, we'll look specifically at ramdisk.img. This is based on the work found here.

Let's pretend our directories are:
~/work/android: directory where you did your git, envbuild, lunch/choosecombo from.
~/work/tmp: empty directory for us to play in

If you have already done a build, you will find out/target/product/generic/ramdisk.img.  This is a gzipped cpio file.
Extracting ramdisk.img

~/work/tmp$ cp ~/work/android/out/target/product/generic/ramdisk.img ./ramdisk.cpio.gz

~/work/tmp$ gzip -d ramdisk.cpio.gz

~/work/tmp$ mkdir tmp2

~/work/tmp$ cd tmp2

~/work/tmp/tmp2$ cpio -i -F ../ramdisk.cpio

((modify files... for example, init.rc or init.goldfish.rc))

Rebuilding ramdisk.img

~/work/tmp/tmp2$ cpio -i -t -F ../ramdisk.cpio | cpio -o -H newc -O ../ramdisk2.cpio

~/work/tmp/tmp2$ cd ..

~/work/tmp$ gzip -c ramdisk2.cpio > ramdisk.img

Now you should be able to use the new ramdisk.img with your emulator =)

adb does not have permission to access my Atrix?

The Atrix does not have the option to allow installing from unknown (ie: non-Market) locations.  As such, I was unsure what I would see when I tried to install APKs from the command line...

malachi@onyx:~$ adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
????????????    no permissions

Not good... but, surely there is a way around that...?

Turns out it is quite simple really....





1. Stop the existing ADB server.

malachi@onyx:~$ adb kill-server

2. Start adb's server as root.  You could try sudo adb instead, but I didn't...

malachi@onyx:~$ sudo su - root
root@onyx:~# adb start-server
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
root@onyx:~# exit
logout

3. Run adb again... this time, with root running the server, it will work.

malachi@onyx:~$ adb devices
List of devices attached
TA20704PWJ    device

Motorola Atrix

After having to pull the battery on my N1 repeatedly today, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade. I'll let you know what I think after I have had some time to play around with it.

Repository has moved

In Galatea - A Maven/Android Archetype, I showed how to use the maven archetype to create a basic Android app.  The server hosting the Nexus repository has been replaced by services from CloudBees.com.  As such, the instructions to generate an artifact from the repository have changed.

malachi@onyx:~/work/test2$ mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://repository-malachid.forge.cloudbees.com/public-snapshot/archetype-catalog.xml
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                        
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Maven Stub Project (No POM) 1
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] >>> maven-archetype-plugin:2.0:generate (default-cli) @ standalone-pom >>>
[INFO]
[INFO] <<< maven-archetype-plugin:2.0:generate (default-cli) @ standalone-pom <<<
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-archetype-plugin:2.0:generate (default-cli) @ standalone-pom ---
[INFO] Generating project in Interactive mode
[INFO] No archetype defined. Using maven-archetype-quickstart (org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:1.0)
Choose archetype:
1: http://repository-malachid.forge.cloudbees.com/public-snapshot/archetype-catalog.xml -> ardor3d-archetype (-)
2: http://repository-malachid.forge.cloudbees.com/public-snapshot/archetype-catalog.xml -> galatea-archetype (-)
3: http://repository-malachid.forge.cloudbees.com/public-snapshot/archetype-catalog.xml -> kryten-archetype (-)
Choose a number: : 2

Upgrading NexusOne from 2.2.2 to 2.3.3

An old coworker, Scott Hooper, pointed out this site for me so I finally managed to get Gingerbread onto my N1 =) Yay me :)  Now let's hope it fixes some of those annoying issues (like the repeated need to pull the battery).