Einfach nur krass…

Google made developing an Android app fairly simple. Everything you need can be downloaded for free from Android’s development site. This includes the Android API, an Android emulator (for running Android apps directly on your computer), and an Eclipse plugin called ADT (Android Developer Tools). However, there’s one thing missing: the Java source code.

The Problem ¶

Despite the fact the Android is (supposed to be) an open source project, the downloads don’t include the source code of Android. So, when opening an Android class in Eclipse, you may see something like this:

To solve this problem you had to manually download the whole Android source code (which contains much more than just the Java source code files) and then manually assemble a source files directory from the Java files scattered throughout the Android source tree. Very tedious and certainly not very simple.

The Solution ¶

Fortunately, there is a Google Code project named “adt-addons” aiming to solve this problem. The project actually consists of several Eclipse plugins, but the one you want is called “Android Sources”. You can either search the instructions on the project page, or follow them (nicely formatted) here.

Basically what you need is to install the “Android Sources” plugin (about 170 MB). Here’s the update URL:

http://adt-addons.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/source/com.android.ide.eclipse.source.update/

After installing the plugin, simply restart Eclipse and the Android source code is already attached to the Android classes.

This is just a note to my self of what Eclipse plugins I’ll use. This list may, however, also be useful to you.

• Subclipse: Subversion support
• MercurialEclipse: Mercurial support
• ExploreFS: This plugin allows you to open a file in Windows Explorer/Finder through the context menu.
• CheckStyle: This plugins allows you define more precise rules for your code style. If a rule is violated, a warning is issued.

• TestNG: Unit testing framework (much like JUnit)

To see what plugins have already been installed, go to Help –> Install new software… and click on What is already installed? at the bottom of the dialog.

In this part of the “Projects in Visual C++ 2010″ mini series another important aspect of C++ programming is explain: precompiled headers. Precompiled headers (or precompiled header files) in many cases significantly reduce the time needed to compile a project.

Here at work I have a C++ project with about 50 .cpp files in it. The project uses the Qt library and all files only include the absolute minimum of header files required. Without precompiled headers, compiling the project takes about 56 seconds. With precompiled headers, the compile time goes down to about 7 seconds. That’s eight times faster.

Related Articles:

• Projects in Visual C++ 2010 – Part 1: Creating a DLL project

• Projects in Visual C++ 2010 – Part 2: Project Dependencies

This article is the second part of the subprojects mini series. The first part was about creating a DLL project. This part will show how to use a DLL library project in another project.

Referencing a library in C++ (or, more specific, with Visual C++) is somewhat cumbersome – or should I say, used to be somewhat cumbersome. Fortunately, with the release of Visual C++ 2010 this has been greatly simplified. This article first shows the old way and then describes the new (simple) way.

Related Articles:

• Projects in Visual C++ 2010 – Part 1: Creating a DLL project

• Projects in Visual C++ 2010 – Part 3: Precompiled Headers

When you write software, you often/sometimes divide your project into several subprojects. This mini series describes how to do this with Visual C++ 2010 (but this first part also applies to earlier versions). We start with creating a library project in form of a DLL.

Related articles:

• Projects in Visual C++ 2010 – Part 2: Project Dependencies

• Projects in Visual C++ 2010 – Part 3: Precompiled Headers