Android™ 3 SDK Programming For Dummies®

Chapter 12

Effectively Using Your Integrated Development Environment

In This Chapter

• Maximizing the capabilities of Eclipse in developing Android applications
• Finding and fixing bugs in Android applications by using the debugger
• Tracking the progress of your app by using the logcat window
• Writing specialized unit tests for Android apps

Most of us who were (or will admit to) programming in Java back when it was originally released used Java command line tools such as javac to compile Java programs, java to run them, and jdb to debug them. These tools were simple to use and did the job well. When Java was made open by Sun Microsystems, the size of the Java software development community exploded and companies making Java products just couldn't leave well enough alone. Sun itself, and then IBM and Oracle, created open (and open source) integrated development environments (IDE) aimed at making large-scale Java development easier.

What we mean by open that is that the Java IDE had an extensible “plug-in” architecture in which new functionality could be added to a foundation (that was essentially a framework, like the Android framework — except for building development and development support tools), such as language-specific editors, integration with version controls systems such as CVS (http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/) and SVN (http://subversion.apache.org/), and extensions for specific frameworks such as the Android SDK. Of these IDEs, Eclipse has become the most widely used. It was ...