Debug and production resources

Question

Some Android libraries such as Google Analytics use resources for configuration purposes (e.g. ga_trackingId).

In these cases, I have different values for debug and production. What I currently do is manually comment the production values when I'm debugging, and viceversa. It looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <!--  DEBUG -->
    <string name="ga_trackingId">UA-12345678-1</string>
    <integer name="ga_dispatchPeriod">1</integer>
    <bool name="ga_debug">true</bool>

    <!--  PRODUCTION -->    
    <!--string name="ga_trackingId">UA-87654321-1</string>
    <integer name="ga_dispatchPeriod">120</integer>
    <bool name="ga_debug">false</bool-->
</resources>

This way of switching configuration is tedious and error-prone, and generates unnecessary repository changes if I'm not careful. Is there a better way?

(e.g.: on iOS I use conditional compilation with the IF DEBUG macro)

Answer 1

Under the src folder you probably have a main folder where you store all shared stuff. But you can have specific resources for flavours or build types.

Put a folder named debug under the src folder where you will place a copy of your xml file but with with proper content. You have to maintain the folder structure under debug so the global_tracker.xml needs to be placed in ../src/debug/res/xml

Your folder structure should look like this:

Android Studio will notice that this xml file have multiple versions.

This is what you should see in AS:

You can use this for all kind of resources, i.e., have multiple versions of the same file and it will be "magically" chosen properly.

Answer 2

I had a similar issue with Google Maps keys where they depend on the signature. What I did was to use the ant script which generates/copies resources to the project conditionally. You can include the ant script in Eclipse under the Project>Properties>Builders

If you need to use the DEBUG value in the code, you can create a java file with static values that will be included conditionally too.

Please comment if ant environment variables worked properly (you can see the "Build type: " message in console after execution of the script).

<project name="build-res">
<property name="conditional.resources.dir" value="myresources" />
<property name="keys_file" value="res/values/keys.xml" />

<target name="copy-release" if="${build.mode.release}" >
    <property name="build.type" value="Release" />
    <echo message="Build type: ${build.type}" />
    <property name="google.maps.key" value="nanana-value-for-release" />
    <copy file="${conditional.resources.dir}/Release.java" tofile="gen/com/example/project/BuildInfo.java" />
</target>

<target name="copy-debug" if="${build.mode.debug}">
    <property name="build.type" value="Debug" />
    <echo message="Build type: ${build.type}" />
    <property name="google.maps.key" value="lalala-value-for-debug" />
    <copy file="${conditional.resources.dir}/Debug.java" tofile="gen/com/example/project/BuildInfo.java" />
</target>

<target name="build-res" depends="copy-debug,copy-release">
    <echo file="${keys_file}" message="&lt;?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;string name='google_maps_key'&gt;${google.maps.key}&lt;/string&gt;&lt;/resources&gt;" />
</target>
</project>