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Comment by samiq | Hacker News Reader

For people that don't actually use Android Studio, what does your dev setup looks like?

React native! Sublime to edit text (mostly the React app, but you can modify Android/ios if you want). I have the node CLI compiling code in one terminal, and then pointing all that to a Genymotion android emulator. Pretty smooth! Not having to compile the whole android app that only serves as a container to the JS is a godsend!

http://flutter.io works right with IntelliJ IDEA, so you don't need to deal with the Android SDK junk.

even flutter doesn't use studio's gradle setup.

I'm not sure what you mean by "setup" but Flutter does use Gradle and Flutter's Gradle plugin [1] depends on the Android SDK's Gradle plugin.

Also, Flutter's install instructions say: "Flutter requires Android Studio to be installed and configured" [2].

The Flutter SDK hides this away nicely, but Gradle runs when you launch a Flutter app during development (on Android).

[1] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/packages/flut...

[2] https://flutter.io/setup-macos/#android-setup

You can do Flutter dev without Android Studio[0], but I'm guessing if you want to ship/test in the world of Android, you would need Android Studio.

[0] https://flutter.io/intellij-ide/

Yes, Android Studio is needed for running Flutter apps on Android but not for iOS. (You don't normally need to launch Android Studio, just have it installed on your machine.)

Similarly, if you want to run on iOS you need a Mac with xCode installed.

(It's rather weird to me that you need to install entire other IDE's as developer dependencies to build mobile apps, but that seems to be how it is.)

> It's rather weird to me that you need to install entire other IDE's as developer dependencies to build mobile apps, but that seems to be how it is.

I don't remember the details, but a couple years ago there was a way to install just the Xcode build tools without installing the entire IDE. I'm sure there's a similar process for the Android SDK. (Though, of course, none of that is officially supported, so you're on your own for the most part.)

Edit: Turns out Google provides downloads for just the SDK without Android Studio[1], so it looks like the separation is unofficial only for Xcode.

You definitely can build Flutter apps for Android without Android Studio. https://ifdevthentalk.com/2017/05/29/flutter-on-windows-with...

Flutter instructions only say that because google is shifting from providing just the SDK.

First there were SDK and NDK links.

Then there where SDK Tools that autoupdate and downloads the SDK.

Now there is only links to studio, an IDE that contains the auto update tools that downloads the SDK.

But if you want to jump all the hops, you might be able to download just the SDK. For now some old convenient links might still be up.

I do Android dev in Visual Studio with Xamarin.

Your app is structured the same as a native one (Activities, Receivers, Services, Layouts, etc) and the XML for your layouts is identical, but you get to work in C# and don’t have to deal with Gradle etc.

I like it.

What downsides does it have compared to a more traditional environment? I'm a C# developer so Xamarin sounds really tempting, it's just that I don't want to break my head on "simple" stuff I could easily avoid with a traditional environment

You still have to learn the underlying story platform and API, that’s not abstracted. Also choosing between Xamarin Forms and Xamarin Native for the UI (not compatible between them). Obscure errors sometimes.

But from my (little) experience on it, getting to an app running and start working on it is way mire easy than with the Java approach. Give it a try :)

Maybe the designer isnt that good.

But overall it's much better. And you get:

Shared models with your web api, reusable business for iOS and Windows, great tools like ReSharper, and so on.

I am currently using a pure command-line build, with Ninja build files, and a standalone NDK toolchain (https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/standalone_toolchai...). It's a pretty hacky solution but it works and it's very fast.

This is for C++ code, which is kind of a special case. Android Studio now has C++ support but I tried it and wasn't impressed. Among other problems, the build process seems to be extremely slow.

We are pretty much 2nd class citzens on AS.

In the early years of Android Studio, I generally preferred IntelliJ. I have since converted our application and main library (SQLCipher for Android) to use Gradle. I have Instant Run disabled, but otherwise I haven't run into many issues with Android Studio. We still coordinate our library build with a Makefile.

Cordova in Visual Studio right now.

(On very lean teams that don't have the resources to build bespoke UI for every platform, even with Xamarin or React Native, and the web platform is a good compromise for the simple data collection apps we are building.)

Same here. Using Cordova with Atom or Sublime, and building/signing/deploying on the device via the CLI.

We need to deploy to desktop/mobile/chromebook and we don't have the budget to develop native UI for each one.

The be honest the only problematic platform has been iOS and its crappy UIWebView / WkWebView, and Windows but only because we are using Squirrel for the installs.

What's wrong with Squirrel and Windows? I thought they had a Windows update framework?

It has given me a few headaches. On Mac, Squirrel has worked flawlessly.

The biggest headache for my users is that the app is not added to the start menu, and the .exe is buried in some deep bizarre folder. Maybe there is a way to solve this, but I haven't been able to find it. There is an option to add a shortcut to the desktop, but if the user deletes it then the exe is lost forever.

I've had other bizarre problems for a few users and the only solution was to reinstall the app from scratch. Tech support is not very happy about that.

Maybe it all stems from my Windows ignorance but Electron-builder, one of the most important projects for packaging Electron apps, is moving away from Electron to NSIS. The problem is that AFAIK NSIS doesn't work with Electron updater.

I'm seriously considering moving away from Electron and replacing it with a UWP JS app and distribute it via the Windows Store.

Man, that sucks. I just read through the discussion on that and can see where the pain points are in using Squirrel.Windows [0]. Hopefully they eventually deal with that. I don't use Windows much, so outside of making sure Squirrel.Windows is working correctly, I don't have much of an opinion on whether or not it provides a good UX to end-users (and it sounds like it doesn't, unfortunately).

[0]: https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/issues...

VSCode dropped Squirrel on Windows ages ago for most of those same reason.

My only reason to support an Electron app on Windows is a need to import ancient Access MDB files. I've been meaning to explore deeper the possibility of using the desktop bridge for my Access reader component and call it from the Cordova UWP JS app. It's on my TODO list to explore, but I think just having a single UWP app (with a desktop component that lights up as available) would be the best distribution plan on Windows.

Do you know what VSCode uses now?

Looks like InnoSetup:

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/build/gulpfi...

I'm about 75% vim, 25% Android Studio, usually in that order (bulk of the changes in vim, then cleanup in studio).

Is this effective? I've never used vim, but Android Studio is great as an IDE. It has lots of autocomplete for tedious things like layouts, the shortcuts open up files as needed, and it highlights more effective ways to do things. This is extra useful for Kotlin.

I use Qt Creator with Qt 5.9 for C++/QML/Js programming.

I use IntelliJ, with LibGDX/Gradle (game development)

Last year: Ionic/Cordova and Visual Studio Pro.

This year: Expo/React-Native and VS Code.

you can't.

in typical Google being evil fashion, using their central authority on Android they now discontinued android sdk and made the sdk a piece of android studio. for no reason other than forcing everyone to beta test their "version 3" (ha) studio. so much so that you now have to download the whole studio, and pick the sdk from within it. there are still some ways to find the sdk directly, but they are going away.

I'm not aware of plans to force users to download sdk only through Android Studio. You can find download links to the sdk at the bottom of: https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html

disclosure: I work on the Android Studio team.

Egg, meet face.

Yes, but now it's CLI only. It used to have GUI.

Not saying it is forbidden. But everywhere that google used to say "download the android SDK" now says, for no good reason, "download Android Studio".

Why does flutter tells to download android studio, open it, run the sdk downloader, close it forever and move to another IDE?

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