Android - testing vs. production version

Question

I am facing problem. I need to build one app in two ways, first build is for development (testing) use, second build should be production version. Are there any ways how to do it programatically? (with some build engines) I mean that both apps shloud run on one device at the same time if possible. Both version are APK from one Android project.

Thanks

Answer 1

Personally I use this to determine whether I am in debugging mode:

final PackageInfo pinfo = getPackageInfo(ctx);
final boolean debugMode = (pinfo.applicationInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_DEBUGGABLE) != 0;

This code is based on the debuggable attribute of the Application tag of the android-manifest.xml:

• If this attribute is explicitely set to true debugMode will be set to true.

• But if it is explicitely set to false or not present in the xml (implicit values), debugMode will be set to false.

Doing this way you cannot run both app on the same device at the same time as two APK need two different package name to be installed concurrently. So you have to build two eclipse projects, each one having its own package name (for example com.example.myapp.debug and com.example.myapp), and why not using a common lib (com.example.myapp.common) that would contain almost all your code:

• com.example.myapp.debug has its debuggable flag set to true

• and com.example.myapp has its debuggable flag set to false

Answer 2

As far as I see, you really need to create different applications from you base code. One way to get this done, as I did it, is to use Ant script that copies the entire project source into another directory, say "testing", and while doing so, replaces (e.g. using copy filtering) certain values from XML files, like from AndroidManifest.xml. One of the first things to replace is applications package that needs to be unique for each app. The Java classes like Activities can still reside in the original packages, their names in AndroidManifest.xml just need to be absolute. Once source has been copied and filtered, you can use Ant's antcall task from the main build.xml to build the customized app. So at the end, you can say e.g.: "ant -Denv=testing build" and you have an APK that can be installed next to your production version.

Another alternative is to use Maven that's Android plugins support project overlaying. And of course you can use library projects, see: Android – multiple custom versions of the same app.