Developing for android....on your android?

Khannie

Is it possible to have an android development environment running on your phone? One that I could (for example) have an SSH server running on, which I ssh to, run eclipse, build apps, all that jazz.

I know it should be possible when ubuntu for android comes out later this year, I'm just wondering if it's achievable in the mean-time?

It strikes me that the higher end phones (e.g. the quad core ones) should be capable of running a half decent build environment which is obviously very portable.

Professey Chin

I remember AIDE got released a while ago.
Never used it (since I cant develop for poo) so dunno how good it is

srsly78

It's possible but not practical.

On any android phone it's easy to include the missing linux userland stuff. Then you can run what you want, problem is it's slow coz of the cpu and memory. On the first android phone I setup gcc etc and did some compiling. It took an overclocked G1 several hours to compile OpenSSL, compared to about 10 seconds on an old desktop.

Even newer phones with their fancy spec are nothing compared to a proper desktop. And eclipse and various other tools are known to be hogs as well Maybe with a lightweight window manager and lightweight tools you could be productive...

Better idea is to use your android tablet as a thin client, showing a remote desktop on your main development machine. Probably if using a phone you would want it plugged into a larger screen.

The_B_Man

The main problem would be the keyboard! If you had an external one, fair enough, but the soft one, aside from most of them being ****, would cover up the whole bottom half of the screen, only allowing you to see a limited slice of the screen.
That would wreck my head!

The Corinthian

The Great Chinholio wrote: »

I remember AIDE got released a while ago.

There's a few other ones out there, such as Android java editor, although AIDE is probably the best one out there.

However, as has been mooted, it's not very practical. Regardless of how powerful the phone is, a keyboard and mouse are still a lot easier to use than a small touch-screen, for any significant amount of coding. It could be useful enough for hotfixes, but other than version control issues, you also have to get around the issue of public keys.

jonneymendoza

Khannie wrote: »

Is it possible to have an android development environment running on your phone? One that I could (for example) have an SSH server running on, which I ssh to, run eclipse, build apps, all that jazz.

I know it should be possible when ubuntu for android comes out later this year, I'm just wondering if it's achievable in the mean-time?

It strikes me that the higher end phones (e.g. the quad core ones) should be capable of running a half decent build environment which is obviously very portable.

my question is WHY? whats the point? and thats coming from a professional android developer

Khannie

jonneymendoza wrote: »

my question is WHY? whats the point? and thats coming from a professional android developer

Portability. Have my dev env in my pocket.

Khannie

The_B_Man wrote: »

The main problem would be the keyboard! If you had an external one, fair enough, but the soft one, aside from most of them being ****, would cover up the whole bottom half of the screen, only allowing you to see a limited slice of the screen.
That would wreck my head!

Yeah, would require a bluetooth keyboard and a HDMI out to be useful really.

jonneymendoza

Khannie wrote: »

Portability. Have my dev env in my pocket.

i dont know about u but i prefer coding on a 22inch screen or above using a keyboard and mouse. dont know how its even possible to code on a smartphone

28064212

Khannie wrote: »

Portability. Have my dev env in my pocket.

TeamViewer is another option, if your workstation is always on and connected. Not particularly nice to be developing that way, but certainly works in an emergency, and no worries about integrating a different device into a development environment

The Corinthian

jonneymendoza wrote: »

my question is WHY? whats the point?

The only practical point, IMHO, would be for time sensitive hot fixes.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would ever think that using such apps, on a touch screen smartphone, would ever become their primary environment by choice. However Smartphones, especially Android, have a varied range of apps that allow some degree of remote control over remote systems; Control Panel for cPanel, MySQL Connect, AndFTP and Android Web Editor, to name just a few, are all immensely useful if you're out and about and you need to make some critical hotfix to a system or application.

In this regard being able to do this for app development would seem a good option in some cases and there are IDE's for Android that do allow this.

However there are two principle issues involved. First is source control, as your default codebase is unlikely to be up to date on the phone and if changed there your source needs to be updated elsewhere. AIDE appears to handle this, as it does come with source control functionality.

The second issue is the app's public key; not much point compiling your app on your phone when the key does not match that on your development machine or published app, as you can't really do much with your hotfix other than run it on your phone. In this regard, AIDE and other similar apps don't appear to deal with this issue, making such an IDE on Android of little practical use.

Edit: Correction; just looking at AIDE again and it does allow for an imported keystore to be used when exporting a compiled app, which would appear to deal with this second issue.