Re: [andmore-dev] updates

[David Carver <kingargyle@xxxxxxxxx>]

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually move off of Gradle, to one of the recently opened sourced build tools from Google.   Gradle will still be around, but like everything it has a shell life.

On 5/23/18 10:15 AM, Doug Schaefer wrote:

That is the elephant in the room. While we've opened the door to an Eclipse based solution for Android, but there is no denying how complicated a task it is especially as you mention Andrew as the Android SDK evolves and shifts away from the foundation Andmore was originally built upon.

I think that is what is driving the IDE world to a much more modular approach where components can be shared between different IDE front ends. We've used that to our advantage with CDT where we rely as much as we can on the SDK to provide tools and the IDE becomes an integration exercise (thus the 'I' in IDE I guess :)). And now we're seeing it with the language servers. The IDE becomes a shell with a small number of well defined integration points that makes it so much easier to take in new directions.

Andmore on the other hand is massive and is highly coupled with Eclipse APIs. I really wonder whether the Android community needs to take a step back and re-envision what they really want in an IDE, especially if they don't like Android Studio and find it too hard to become an Andmore contributor. How would they build an IDE knowing what they know today and what's coming in the future. Lars mentions Flutter. I have React Native on my list of things to learn. Gradle is clearly the future for Android SDK builds. The IDE needs to be ready to adapt to wherever developers go.

On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 9:39 AM, Andrew Bowley <andrewbowley@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I agree the Eclipse offerings should include an Android development platform I have been performing essential maintenance on Andmore for the last 6 months to this end. Recently I created a fork of Andmore which I call "Andworx" which allows me to progress to the Eclipse Oxygen IDE. Andworx supports both Java 8 and 9 execution environments and automatically adds desugar to the tool chain when compiling above Java level 1.7. It also includes the m2e-android plugin for integration with Maven. Andworx currently works with Android Build Tools version 3.1.1. I have successfully built and launched an Android-27 application with Andworx. However, AAPT is not working correctly with support libraries beyond Android-25, so my current challenge is to update to AAPT2. This also marks the start of getting Andworx to work directly with AAR files instead of having to convert them to library projects.

I have found maintaining Android on Eclipse is difficult, not only because of the ever increasing size and complexity of Android, but now also because of the need for dual Kotlin-Java development capability. On top of this, the Android SDK has now started to acquire some Gradle references, thus diminishing platform neutrality. Current trends do not favor being able to port Android development to another platform. However, Andworx is in there with a fighting chance.

The next potential blow to Android development on Eclipse is the planned removal of deprecated build code from the Android SDK at the end of the year. This is such big news that error messages have been added to appear on the console which warn of the pending change. The problem for me is that there is so much clutter introduced by recent innovations such as Variants, Flavors, Split APKs and incremental builds it's hard to figure out the basic design. Anyway, I thrive on technical challenge so am not daunted

Regards

Andrew

On 23/05/18 20:00, Lars Vogel wrote:

AFAICS Google is positioning the Flutter SDK as the successor of the
Android SDK. https://flutter.io/

At least for Flutte, Google is offering support for IntelliJ and
Visual Studio Code. The Visual Studio Code is not yet using the
Language Server Protocol but AFAIK they are planning to support it.
See https://github.com/Dart-Code/Dart-Code/issues/507 and vote for the
issue.

Once this is done, we could adapt the LSP of Eclipse to provide
Flutter support. This way Eclipse could leverage Googles resources and
still provide support for mobile development with Flutter (and hence
for Android and MacOS).

Best regards, Lars

On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 7:16 AM, Mike Milinkovich
<mike.milinkovich@eclipse-foundation.org> wrote:

On 2018-05-23 1:06 AM, Don Wills wrote:

There is a real danger of Google, Microsoft and Apple building really
effective walls around their developer playgrounds, to the detriment of
those who understand the long term importance of portable programming
languages and tools.

Now that is something that we can all agree on!

--
Mike Milinkovich
mike.milinkovich@eclipse-foundation.org
(m) +1.613.220.3223

_______________________________________________
andmore-dev mailing list
andmore-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
To change your delivery options, retrieve your password, or unsubscribe from
this list, visit
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/andmore-dev

_______________________________________________
andmore-dev mailing list
andmore-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
To change your delivery options, retrieve your password, or unsubscribe from this list, visit
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/andmore-dev

_______________________________________________
andmore-dev mailing list
andmore-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
To change your delivery options, retrieve your password, or unsubscribe from this list, visit
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/andmore-dev