How to auto-increment build number of Android project in Eclipse (prefer portable solution)

Question

Getting an IDE to automatically increment build numbers is a long discussed issue - I'm always surprised that something that seems so basic (to me) is so much work.

The highest scored question and answer (by quite a bit) for this topic are here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8156809/150016 My problem is that the solution depends on .net and I'd prefer to avoid a .net dependency for Eclipse solution. I also want to avoid any dependency on VCS.

So, I'm looking for a solution that is portable and 'Eclipse-ish'. I think the best candidates are an Ant solution (which I will post) or a Java app similar to the dotNet app in the linked answer above.

(I didn't add my answer to that question because it has an accepted answer and is already a very long post. If the moderators prefer I will delete this question and add my answer to the question above.)

I was hoping for something comparatively simple but I don't think any solution to this problem really is simple.

Answer 1

In the project's properties dialog, under Builders, you can configure a script to run prior to building your apk.

In the properties dialog, select Builders from the list on the left. Click New to add a new script. On the dialog that pops up, select Program. On the ensuing dialog, call your Builder Program what you like in the Name field. Put the path to the script in the Location field. Give it a working directory in the Working Directory field. Note that you can specify variables in these fields (e.g., we use ${build_project:/libs/update_version.sh} to reference a script in the project's lib directory).

You'll want this to run before any of the other builders, so move it to the top of the list using the Up button.

On the Build Options tab of the Dialog (it's right under the Name field towards the top), you can select options for when you want this program to run.

I'm assuming something like Linux, Unix, or MacOS here. In those systems you can use grep or its variants to get the current versionCode, increment it, and then awk or similar to modify the file accordingly. Or, you could write a Ruby, Python, Perl, etc. script to replace the versionCode in the AndroidManifest.xml file. I suppose there are equivalent tools on Windows, but I'm not very familiar with that environment.

Answer 2

Have you tried to 'Maven-ise' your android project build ?

If you use the "maven-android-plugin", you can keep track of your project build with pom.xml's "version" tag.

In pom.xml you can increment the build version by using "versions-maven-plugin"

To reflect the incremented build number to to your AndroidManifest.xml you can use the Synchronizing Version technique within your pom file.

This way you can auto-increment the android project build number by running the "versions-maven-plugin" every time the app builds. The solution is also portable in the same way the Ant solution is.

I hope this can also solve the problem you have mentioned (and what I have understand). Please correct me if something is missing.