Android Studio: How to debug older version of Android SDK step-by-step

Question

I have an Android project targetting the Android SDK v21. Now I need to debug it on a device with Android 4.4 (i.e. SDK v20). How do I tell Android Studio to attach an older version of the source to the internal classes so that I can step through them?

Answer 1

Here the best solution is to set compile SDK version to 20. So that build tools will compile your project using SDK version 20 and you can debug your app.

When you use several modules in your project you need to set same compile SDK version to each module.

Answer 2

I can not confirm my answer works, but it is working for me.

I replace my compileSdkVersion, buildToolsVersion, minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion with new one like following in my build.gradle file.

android {       compileSdkVersion 22       buildToolsVersion "22.0.1"   defaultConfig {     applicationId "com.example.mytest"     minSdkVersion 15     targetSdkVersion 22     versionCode 1     versionName "1.0" } buildTypes {     release {         minifyEnabled false         proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'),  'proguard-rules.pro'          }      } } 

After changing it, you may not need to convert old to new or new to old sdk component.