Just a quick heads up that I will be presenting about Apache Maven usage for Android development in an updated version from my Vancouver presentation at the Google Technology User Group in Barcelona, Spain on the 10th of September. I look forward to the event and will let you know here how things went 
As you all know the main supported persistence mechanism on Android is storing data in the extremely widespread embedded database SQLite. Now when you look around various books and documentation, the examples you get are most of the time are pretty trivial. When you then come from a background of full on relational database management systems like PostgreSQL, working with SQLite with have a few surprises to you. One of those surprises is that referential integrity is not a standard feature unless you have some tricks up your sleave.. Continue reading ‘Referential integrity with sqlite on Android the lazy way’
So you got your Android application building with Maven and the instrumentation tests running on the continuous integration server give you an all green. Features are good on your application and you think it is time to get it on to the Android market and among users to get some feedback. What now? I will show you how you can get your Android package ready for upload…
Continue reading ‘Sign, zipalign and to market, to market with Maven’
After attending Maven 201 recently and really enjoying it, I am attending Maven 101 from Sonatype today. Lets see if all my base r belong to me
Continue reading ‘Solidifying my Maven foundation’
Recently there has been some discussion on the Maven Android Developer list about getting multi module projects working in Eclipse and IntelliJIDEA. I use IntelliJ IDEA every day and it works very well for me even though there are some improvements needed. Eclipse on the other hand is something I know my way around well enough, but just never warmed up to it. But I knew that I had the Maven Android Plugin Samples multi module project MorseFlash working at some stage. And it seemed like I am the only one. So I promised to document how I have it set up….
Continue reading ‘Multi Module Android project in Eclipse’
Continuing with my list of impressions and ideas from yesterday follows the next list:
Continue reading ‘Sonatype Maven Training – MVN 201 continued’
I am attending the advanced Maven training course offered by Sonatype today and tomorrow and thought I would just jot down my impressions while they are fresh. Last week I already got the training material and links to some awesome resources provided by Matthew McCullough.
Continue reading ‘Impressions from the first day of MVN 201′
With the latest release of the Maven Android Plugin a bunch of changes I did went out to the rest of the users of the plugin. As of version 2.5.0 the plugin has improved verification of the sdk platform and api level, a new zipalign goal and maybe the emulator start works on windows too. And the samples have been expanded and changed to use the Android jar artifacts from Maven central. But lets look at the changes of the plugin in detail today and maybe the samples another day…
Continue reading ‘Maven Android Plugin with zipalign and improved verification’
It all started now quite a while ago when I got involved with the Maven Android Plugin and found that having to run a bunch of mvn install file commands sucked. I launched a ticket in the Android issue tracker that got rejected by Google even though there was clearly a community demand for the Android jar artifact to hit Maven central. As a next best step I created the Maven Android SDK Deployer and things cruised along okay for a bit. And then out of the blue Robert Manning, from the awesome SQuirrel SQL Client project, contacted me about the status and issues with getting the jars into Maven central if they are built from the open source code drop. And with Robert things really moved.
Continue reading ‘Android Artifacts hit Maven Central’
In the beginning writing apps for Android is easy. Then the usual things creep in. You start getting beyond Hello World examples and answers on mailing list, you begin refactoring code and features and you really need to make sure it runs on all platforms. Luckily there are helpers around. For the testing side of things the whole test suite around instrumentation tests is really great (although I wish they used testng and not junit as the base) and now this is finally really well documentation on the site and not just in the samples code somewhere. However if you really want to use these you have to run your build against a device or an emulator (or better both). And thats where the Maven Android Plugin comes in handy.
Continue reading ‘Automatically starting the emulator in your Android build’