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Google Launches Android Studio 2.0 With Instant Run, Faster Android Emulator, and Cloud Test Lab (venturebeat.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the development-environment dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Android Studio 2.0, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE), with a long list of new features. You can download the new version for Windows, Mac, and Linux now directly from Android.com/SDK. In November, Google unveiled Android Studio 2.0, the second major version of its IDE. Version 2.0 brings a slew of improvements, including Instant Run, a faster Android emulator, and app indexing improvements. Google released a beta in February, though it didn't say when the final version would be ready ([VentureBeat] speculated in time for its I/O developer conference in May, and the company debuted with a month to spare). The full feature list includes Instant Run, Android Emulator, Cloud Test Lab, App Indexing, and GPU Debugger Preview.

58 comments

  1. Editing? Nah. by complete+loony · · Score: 1

    The summary almost had the full feature list anyway. You could have edited all those links into it so you didn't have to repeat yourself.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  2. And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Queue the " it's better to use Vim/emacs (because it's light weight and real devs don't use IDEs)" developers

    1. Re: And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Followed shortly by someone accusing you of being an insensitive clot for not mentioning their favorite editor

    2. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by jwymanm · · Score: 1

      It is better to use Vim/Emacs (Spacemacs ftw!). Real devs however use whatever works best for them.

    3. Re: And in 3, 2, 1... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Yeah like true real editor ED!

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    4. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      I can't get too enthusiastic about the 'lightweight' wars when I'm so spoiled by cheap hardware; but it is worth noting that, unless they've really fixed the hell out of it in this release; Android Studio is about as far from 'lightweight' as they come. Running it is like picking up a decent size chunk of tungsten: you expect it to be heavy; but just how much heavier than you had expected is still a bit of a shock.

      You'd think that an SSD, 32GB of RAM, and a 3.4GHz i5 would make starting an IDE containing a blank project at least reasonably fast-ish; but no, minutes later, gradle is still gradling away to itself and the lovely alien-on-every-supported-platform UI is lagging and waiting for it to catch up.

    5. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Tooke · · Score: 2

      It is better to use Vim/Emacs (Spacemacs ftw!). Real devs however use whatever works best for them.

      Agreed. I use both actually. Android Studio is kept on one monitor. I use it for syntax checking, auto imports, refactoring, etc. I do the real coding in vim on the other monitor (with portrait orientation). It took some effort to get vim to auto-load changes made by android studio, but it works very well now. In the Before Time when Eclipse was the standard for Android dev, I used eclim which eased the pain of Eclipse significantly. Thank goodness those days are over.

      --
      Anybody want a peanut?
    6. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does that even gain you?

    7. Re: And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He keeps his hardcore developer status while still taking advantage of IDE features but not officially using the IDE

    8. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, using vim/emacs is not better for Android or Java development, simply because their APIs are so piss-poor that you actually need an IDE.

    9. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's "Cue", buddy. Sounds the same, different meaning.

    10. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I will put these developers in a queue, behind those that are interested in the current story.

      Bet those developers use xterm (or at best urxvt), because for some reason tabbed terminal emulators that use gtk2 | gtk3 | Qt for the right-click menu are evil.

    11. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by someone247356 · · Score: 2

      Sounds like they *still* haven't managed to get a true offline version working yet.

      Previous versions were horribly network dependent. Gradle would pull megs and megs of data whenever you started a new project (and at various other times). If you have a _fast_ network, it isn't too bad. If the end point is slow, or your ISP is typical American sloth service, expect to wait.

      The less bad news was that their *offline* switch (which is actually a cached switch) will minimize those occurrences (usually) *after* you've waited through the initial construction.

      The sad part is that there is *nothing* inherent in gradle that requires that behaviour. The devs could have chosen to package it to include the needed base libraries and default to a local gradle build.

      --
      Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
    12. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Queue works perfectly fine and sort of makes more sense. You're telling all the people who are going to make these comments to get in a line.

    13. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google and Android development are such a joke and this is a perfect example of why.

      I downloaded this earlier in the morning. It had a fit about not being able to find the JDK, even though I installed version 8 like it wanted. What Google doesn't tell you is that they want the 64-bit JDK. So they have this textbox and directory browser for you to tell it where the JDK is. Google can't guess and won't tell you what part of the JDK it wants (root folder? bin folder? java.exe?). It also can't actually parse a directory either because what it really reads is the JAVA_HOME environment variable that it can't pick up until you restart the installer. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if I had clicked the JDK link that it suggested (the page said it needed v8, the installer pointed to V7).

      Finally, I get this steaming pile installed. And then it gradles and gradles and gradles, in a dialog window no less, for over an hour. Eventually it launched into a wizard where some of the buttons just wouldn't respond to mouse clicks (had to hit Enter). It was probably another 20 minutes before anything in the left menu worked. After that, it couldn't run the new default project because it couldn't find a device to emulate. Of course you can't add a device profile because A) they're not available online (OK, maybe Samsung Galaxy is a nobody brand), B) the New button doesn't work, C) the Clone button doesn't work, and D) the Edit context menu doesn't work. At this point I've had enough and thought maybe I have to uninstall and reinstall it.

      Of course it locked some folder in AppData where the Android SDK had left a couple of unexplained files and wouldn't move forward until I broke its hold on those handles with Process Explorer. Reinstalled, reloaded, and it jumps straight to my aborted project. Only this time, the status bar is grasdling and gradling and gradling instead of a dialog window. An entire day has been wasted on this. Java and Google are a tag team from hell, slow and half-baked every single time.

      Compare to Visual Studio, 2008 or 2012, that takes an hour to install off a CD/DVD, doesn't have to sync anything, and runs its default projects right out of the box. I swear to God if the idiots at Square would get off of their fat asses and make their card reader compatible with Windows I'd buy a Surface Pro so fast their fat heads would spin.

    14. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Tooke · · Score: 1

      I like the editing features of vim. Yes, there are plugins, but why settle for a subset when you can have the full editor?

      --
      Anybody want a peanut?
    15. Re:And in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're attempting to be cute by making an intentional pun, sure. Otherwise you just sound like an idiot.

  3. I'm feeling faint... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    Two Google Android articles in one day. This is too much!

    1. Re:I'm feeling faint... by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      If I didn't know any better I'd assume they were building hype towards a new major release and a flagship Nexus phone in time for the Christmas gift buying period.

    2. Re:I'm feeling faint... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot is just a shill for Google! How much did they pay! INCOHERENT BABBLE!

  4. Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by donour · · Score: 1

    This version was released today and it is already one major revision behind Intellij IDEA. Why can't they track jetbrains head branch?

    1. Re:Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Why can't they use a decent build system? Gradle is just about the worst option out there.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    2. Re:Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by brantondaveperson · · Score: 3, Informative

      Dave's first rule of software engineering; All build systems are terrible, get used to it.

    3. Re:Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by AuMatar · · Score: 2

      All build systems get ignored. In a decade and a half I've never seen anyone just use a build system, they always end up writing their own around it (or in place of it).

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    4. Re:Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I've successfully used Ant in several very modular build environments where a module could be fully defined in as little as 2 lines. Unfortunately, I inherited both Maven and Gradle systems on other jobs, and those things are just a cluster to do anything reasonable with. When you spend more time modding the build system to support new code than coding, there's a serious problem with them. Gradle makes the case that Maven sucks. That's about the only thing the Gradle authors got correct. In every other way, Gradle is far worse than Maven, and possibly worse than make/imake. (Just to put it in perspective).

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    5. Re:Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Make doesn't do very well for Java I think (something with the directory structure usually being a horrible mess and tied to your code naming I think), but for small C projects I still think it is the simplest, fastest and most reliable solution out there.
      As the project grows and you have more developers not familiar with "make" I guess you might try something like cmake instead, but to be honest the cases where I've seen people switch away from "make" I've seen them end up with something that was just as messy after a short while because their real issue was nobody taking care of the build system an keeping it sane, not the build system itself.
      That said, gradle is buggy as hell to a degree that "make" never was in all the time I used it, and that certainly is at least one objective measurement of "suckiness"...

    6. Re:Not based on IDEA 2016.1? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      make/imake did not work well for java because it started a new process for every directory IIRC, or maybe it was for each compilable unit? That means loading everything up every time you had a new directory (or file), which obviously greatly slowed down compilations for larger projects. That's not a slam on make (or imake) but on using the wrong tool for the job. Even considering that, those tools may be more appropriate to compile java than gradle, which supposedly was designed to build java projects.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  5. Alright Microsoft by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    Let's see what VS can do to compete against it? Competition is wonderful and I am glad it's here. I do wonder if instant run is a good idea or will introduce more bugs?

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re: Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      VS has always been way behind the major IDEs. That's why there's a market for things like Resharper

    2. Re: Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You must be high on crack... if MS does ANYTHING right, its IDEs. Visual Studio and its debugger is better than anything out there. Period.

    3. Re: Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you compare VS' immediate window with Intellij's equivalent for example , you can see it's not on the same level

    4. Re: Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Visual Studio and its debugger is better than anything out there. Period.

      if "anything out there" includes only Notepad++, Emacs and Vim.

    5. Re: Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair when, doing Unity development I much preferred VS over monodevelop. But yeah, in my opinion VS sits somewhere in the middle of IDEs with possibly Netbeans at the top of the list

    6. Re: Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are right. Intellij's is just a flaming pile of crap compared to VS.

    7. Re:Alright Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now that Microsoft bought Xamarin, it will continue to be more closely integrated with VS. What used to cost hundreds of dollars for a Xamarin license is now free with the VS Community edition. No need for a separate IDE if you already use VS.

  6. Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 1

    I have a pretty damn capable computer. The android emulator is pretty much unusable. I will be very interested to see if faster translates to fast enough to actually use.

    In my present development setup, the only way I test on android is to test on an actual android. The only time I use the emulator is to see if it is going any faster.

    1. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by non0score · · Score: 1

      Do you have HAXM installed? My experience indicate that full boot with HAXM installed is much, much faster than a regular boot on-device. Apps also run a lot faster in the emulator than on the device. The computer is a 2013 MBP, while the device is a Nexus 6.

    2. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      What baffles me is how the Intel x86 atom-based emulator manages to be so sluggish. Assuming you have the correct alphabet-soup of Intel VT-D and VT-X and whatever else they are lasering off half their SKUs more or less at random today, even Intel's fairly tepid desktop parts will quite cheerfully emulate roughly as many guests as you have RAM for. Until you open up the emulator that only needs to emulate some feeble, power constrained, phone-SoC atom part.

      Then. Then you wait. A lot. This seems strange.

    3. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you looked at Genymotion? It's much, much faster than the official emulator, and actually usable on more than one configuration of machine, unlike HAXM.

      But I believe that the new emulator is actually supposed to be useful now. I'm hoping to find out in a few minutes...

    4. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last time I used Android emulator (with haxm), its biggest problem was unreliability. About 1/7 of application starts ended up in a jam of emulator and/or debugger connection to it. In practice this meant that we could not use the emulator on automated tests but we had to create a test setups where Jenkins was connected with real hardware.

    5. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't use it at all because they insist on compiling for SSSE3 for a 0.00001% performance gain and thus doesn't work at all (and no, I am not going to buy a new computer just because of that, unfortunately CPUs haven't really gotten faster in any ordinary use relevant way since).
      So the only option is to use the ARM images. Of course they are unusably slow, so basically the only thing that works is emulating Android 2.3...
      So if you ever wonder why my apps still support 2.3: It's because that's last time Google managed to have a working emulator.

    6. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uhhh, really? SSSE3 was introduced in 2006 and massive increases in CPU speed were still happening then. If you'd said your CPU was made in 2010 I'd say you had a point, but 2006 to 2010, there were some mighty big gains.

    7. Re:Faster emulator, or fast enough to be usable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SSSE3 was introduced in 2006 by INTEL. If you bought AMD you could buy CPUs without it until 2012, and in fact 2011 was the first time any of them had SSSE3.
      Which is not surprising because (well, besides AMD really falling behind) for most application SSSE3 was just useless.

  7. Launched, waiting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It launched today?

    That means it should be ready to download in a day or two... :)

  8. Awesome - but how about something more useful? by loony · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The emulator wasn't slow before if you picked a decent x86 image. Instant run only works in the smallest kinds of cases and any amount of time saved with it is wasted by fighting it when you know it won't work...

    The bigger question here is why does google spend time on toys like that rather than actually add stuff that people need? They are pushing material design - but you can't use cardview, recyclerview, and such in the UI designer and you're forced to go back to editing the UI by hand. Why do I have a UI then?

    Seriously - I know this is just bitching and probably the last thing that the people who worked hard on 2.0 need but this feels like adding cupholder to a car without breaks.

    Peter.

  9. Closed source terms and conditions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From the Terms and Conditions:

    3.2 You may not use this SDK to develop applications for other platforms (including non-compatible implementations of Android) or to develop another SDK.

    Bunch of hypocrites. Up till now I was firmly on google's side in Google vs Oracle. Now that I took the effort to actually read their terms I'm not with google either.

    Use all open source stuff available and then: Embrace extend extinguish.

    1. Re:Closed source terms and conditions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would Google pay JetBrains for the license to use Android Studio to develop for other platforms? In case you don't understand what this means: this is most likely a license issue with JetBrains.

  10. "Instant Run" by loufoque · · Score: 1

    Couldn't they just say they've got incremental build support instead of using weird names no one knows of?

    1. Re:"Instant Run" by lokedhs · · Score: 3, Informative

      Probably because incremental builds are something quite different from code hop swapping.

    2. Re: "Instant Run" by loufoque · · Score: 1

      Then it's "edit and continue" as Microsoft calls it

    3. Re: "Instant Run" by lokedhs · · Score: 1

      Probably, but that's something I would refer to as a "weird name no one knows of" (where "no one" means "me", as is the standard on the Internet).

    4. Re: "Instant Run" by loufoque · · Score: 1

      I don't code with visual studio and I know what it is...

  11. WTF is AWS? by advocate_one · · Score: 0

    Am I alone in wondering what the heck this is about?

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. Re:WTF is AWS? by advocate_one · · Score: 0

      whoops, wrong article...

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  12. NDK, come on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still no proper NDK support. It's kind of sad when it's easier to use Microsoft's tools than Google's to do any NDK work.

  13. Smart thinking Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By Google writing horrific Swift code they can help pollute the Swift community like they've done with the Java community.

  14. It's not faster at all... quite the opposite by WerewolfOfVulcan · · Score: 1

    I was running Android studio 1.5 on an i3 with 4GB of RAM. Emulator load time was about 3 minutes, gradle builds were 1-3 minutes, time between gradle build finish and app launch was about a minute.

    After upgrading to 2.0, emulator load time is now 11 minutes, gradle builds are nearly five minutes and it takes nearly 3 minutes between gradle build finish and app launch.