Sync Android Studio projects across multiple workstations

Question

I want to be able to work across multiple workstations synchronously jumping from one to the other without having to worry about committing.

I have windows personal and work desktop and a Mac OSX laptop. At the moment, I point my project to a cloud directory and have the local install of Android Studio pointing to a gradle offline cache in another cloud directory. This keeps failing as it tells me that the path to gradle is invalid. Which I understand because gradle is referenced in different locations on different machine (considering the differing file management system in MACOSX and Windows7).

Edit: When I try to open the project, it brings up the "Import Project from Gradle" screen. To which it has the option for me to select "Use local gradle distribution" and select the Gradle home directory. I pointed it to the cache directory, and it tells me:

Cannot Save Settings
Gradle location is incorrect.
Location:C:/Users/Username/.gradle

All my research (include these answers here, and here) suggest that VCS is the way to go. However, I don't see this as a solution to my problem. I'm not looking to version control, I'm looking to transition seamlessly across workstations. Of course I will still use Version Control System for the purpose of saving a working version of my code, or sharing it with other developers, but there has to be a better way when I simply just want to keep all workstations synced.

I come from web development, and I synchronise local environment on AMPPS across multiple computers without any issue. This meant I can transition from my personal desktop, laptop, and work desktop instantly. It frustrates me if I have to remember to commit every time I move around. If I have to do this 20 times a day, and it takes about a minute to do this, that's 20 minutes that could have been spent writing a couple of functions. And what if I forget to commit, then I get to work, or home, that would be a day wasted because I won't actually have the current up to date code...

So the question remains, is there a way to instantly synchronise Android Studio projects? How do I keep all my code base (ie gradle) in sync?

Answer 1

Ok thanks to the comments above which pointed me in the right direction.

Android Studio create some local files that are specific to the machine that you are on. Following on this principle, to sync the "source" files (files that are specific to your application only), you must ignore all these local files. This is similar to what you would store on github. I followed the answer for this question to apply the ignore rules.

Having ignored all the "local files", when I create a new project, the source files are synchronised across all my workstations. In order to establish a local version, I need to "import" the project first. Once it has been imported, "local files" will be created for that particular machine. From then on, I can "open" the project locally.

To summarise:

1. Set your sync to ignore files as per .gitignore or refer to this question.
2. Create a project on one of your workstation and save it in the cloud.
3. When you are ready to work on the project for the first time on another workstation, "import" the project.
4. Once the project has been imported, all local files should have been created.
5. From then on, use the "open" option to continue working on the project.

I hope this helps somebody else, saving hours on googling.