
Introducing Android Studio - ishener
https://plus.google.com/+GoogleDevelopers/posts/ffufAvz9zcz
======
untog
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.

~~~
ihuman
Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I
can't find reasons to dislike it.

~~~
mey
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.

~~~
smrtinsert
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
For quick edits I will turn to jEdit or vim. I've also been giving LightTable
a try and enjoying the early stages.

------
Dove
The early access preview
(<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.

~~~
rpgmaker
Every time I open eclipse I feel like crying. Is just that awful (usability-
wise).

On my search to replace Eclipse for my android development I think I came
across IntelliJ and it was very resources-heavy compared to eclipse which in
the end made me give up on it. Let's hope it's more efficient now...

~~~
Tomdarkness
Make sure you disable any plugins you don't need for IntelliJ Idea otherwise
it will just load every plugin for doing almost everything under the sun which
can make it a bit bloated.

------
miles
Early access preview available now:

<http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html>

~~~
sondh
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.

------
k-mcgrady
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.

------
slg
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.

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

~~~
mullr
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.

------
mtgx
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-
stu...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/google-launches-android-studio-a-
development-tool-for-apps/)

~~~
thorum
"It's an IDE based on IntelliJ."

I'm in.

~~~
brown9-2
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
It's this, they said it was based on the community (free) edition of intellij.

~~~
Taylorious
That makes me angry. I really like Jetbrains as a company and you would think
Google could spare some money and pay Jetbrains something.

~~~
mayanksinghal
CTO of Jetbrains is talking about this at the moment at Google IO. It could
have been a collaboration.

~~~
LordIllidan
Hell, imagine all the PR at the moment. They don't just do Java, they have
IDEs for PHP, iOS, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if their sales took off as a
result of this keynote.

~~~
nevster
I agree. I see it as a massive win for JetBrains!

------
georgemcbay
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
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
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.

~~~
werkshy
I can't even begin to calculate the amount of time I wasted on Eclipse. I
hated it. I tried to use eclim, which kinda work, but started crashing vim
(infrequently) which is worse than not having anything. At least once every
two weeks (for three years) I would get so fed up with how slow it is that I'd
spend an hour or two trying to fix it.

It's hours and days wasted, and that's before I consider any difference in
productivity while actually using each IDE. If any of this sounds familiar, do
spend a couple of weeks in the free version of IDEA. It was night-and-day for
me. The worst part will be your muscle memory (e.g. stepping through the
debugger).

------
airlocksoftware
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>

------
Jare
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
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
Try Nsight Tegra VStudio. <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++!!

------
jefflinwood
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.

------
gleenn
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
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
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.

------
6thSigma
I switched to IntelliJ from Eclipse for Android development a few months ago.
Best decision I've ever made.

------
dinofile
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.

------
emehrkay
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
> 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
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-
stu...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333534/google-android-studio)

------
dasmoth
Any indications of when this will be released?

~~~
veeti
There'll be a session about the new tools in a few hours, so there'll probably
be more news then.

~~~
smrtinsert
Arg, missed that! Can you post a link?

~~~
veeti
It doesn't look like the videos are up yet.

------
chetanahuja
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

------
guelo
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.

------
gtaylor
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.an...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaushal.androidstudio)

~~~
fixedd
I wouldn't be surprised since they're not following the brand guidelines.

[http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/b...](http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/brand.html)

------
mikestew
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.

------
ichinaski
Now I only need a VI plugin for this IDE.

~~~
fly2never
ideavim is your friend

~~~
brightsize
That is fantastic, thanks! Idea just became my default IDE.

------
booop
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...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/316265/tricks-to-speed-up-eclipse).
Perhaps those whose sole complaint with eclipse is its performance should try
some of those suggestions.

~~~
netcraft
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
Okay, I've been using it since yesterday and I think it's _amazing_.

------
sivanmz
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.

------
smackfu
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.

~~~
pjmlp
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!

~~~
andrewcooke
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).

~~~
pjmlp
All nice advices, except they don't work in Fortune 500 corporate environments
where the tooling allowed in "your" computer is project dependent.

------
musashibaka
I would not be surprised if Google now acquires Jetbrains.

------
dsaber
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
This post answered my question:
[http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-
is-t...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/05/15/intellij-idea-is-the-base-
for-android-studio-the-new-ide-for-android-developers/)

"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."

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

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

~~~
tomh-
Doesn't launch in windows 8 either

~~~
tomh-
Try to add a JDK_HOME environment variable which points to your JDK e.g.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_07

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

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

------
BrandonSmith
Android Studio, at present, embeds Eclipse...

./sdk/tools/lib/monitor-x86_64/

This seems to be the DDMS view of the Eclipse ADT.

------
krisc
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?

------
watermel0n
Anyone that needs a color scheme, here is mine
[https://github.com/prignano/Obsidian2-IntelliJ-Android-
Studi...](https://github.com/prignano/Obsidian2-IntelliJ-Android-Studio)
already tested on Android Studio.

------
praterade
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.

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

------
misnome
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.

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

~~~
JasonFruit
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.

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

------
chj
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.

------
sergiotapia
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!

------
warrenmiller
Is this to replace Eclipse or just be an option?

~~~
BaconJuice
I think they will switch to this but Eclipse will always be option.

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

------
tomjen3
Download link?

~~~
dotpavan
<http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html>

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

------
OrsenPike
Any word on if this will be free or paid?

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

------
sigzero
Anything to not use eclipse!

------
chj
any improvement on ndk debugging ould be highly appreciated

------
ttrreeww
They finally ditched that horrible thing called Eclipse!

