
Hello World, meet our new experimental toolchain, Jack and Jill - geekrax
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2014/12/hello-world-meet-our-new-experimental.html
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markcerqueira
This and multidex should make Android developers' lives a lot easier. I just
hope Google fully supports these tools and irons out any issues that come up.

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bonsai80
Given they they also produce a ton of Android apps, it seems like it's in
their best interest to do this for themselves too.

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vidarh
Google has demonstrated time and time again that their developers are
apparently willing to put up with a level of pain in terms of IDEs and build
tools (and I'm tempted to complain about Java too) that gives me approximately
zero confidence that their perception of what's best for them will coincide
with making things easy.

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emilburzo
Are the advantages of the new toolchain available anywhere?

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sgarman
From my understanding it's mostly about build times and maybe a bit of better
code minification snuck in. The current gradle build process with the android
gradle plugin is really slow for larger procjets. My last project took 15
seconds to compile hot and over a 1 minute to compile from cold start. This
adds up when you need to make a build and see it on a device to make sure it
looks right.

They are also making improvements to a UI editor/preview but that never
replaces actually testing on a device. Speed to build is a big feature here.

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bitwize
Nice hedge against ultimately losing the copyright suit Oracle brought against
you, Google.

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fidotron
Indeed, I seriously can't believe this is that high up the list of technical
problems to resolve associated with Android dev.

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droopybuns
Can you guys provide a little more background? I agree that this isn't an
obvious priority, but I don't understand the reason that this would be
considered a hedge.

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comex
It's not. The copyright case is about Google implementing Java standard
library APIs, not anything about compilers/toolchains.

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bitwize
The compiler toolchains can sidestep the copyright issue by converting API
calls into inline code, thus obviating the need to ship infringing API
implementations with each Android device.

APIs are valuable IP. Oracle will fight hard to protect them, and even if the
issue makes it to the Supreme Court, their victory is almost certain. Google
needs an out if the Android platform is to survive; cutting Java out as early
in the compilation process as possible is the best way to avoid infringement.

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bla2
> APIs are valuable IP

That's up to the courts to decide. People can only hope that they decide
against this, else it becomes illegal to create porting layers. For example,
wine (the program) would then be illegal.

