MOTODEV Studio for Android

[RodBarnes]

I have an existing Eclipse installation so I acquired the Android SDK and installed it.  Then I found out about MOTODEV.   Is there any particular advantage to using MOTODEV over a separate Eclipse installation with the Android SDK?

What I have seems to work.  Though I've not done a great deal of Droid development yet (just HelloWorld and becoming familiar with things) I wonder if MOTODEV provides other advantages?

If I go with MOTODEV, I assume I would need to uninstall my existing configuration before installing MOTODEV?

TIA.

[EricC]

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RodBarnes wrote:

I have an existing Eclipse installation so I acquired the Android SDK and installed it.  Then I found out about MOTODEV.   Is there any particular advantage to using MOTODEV over a separate Eclipse installation with the Android SDK?

What I have seems to work.  Though I've not done a great deal of Droid development yet (just HelloWorld and becoming familiar with things) I wonder if MOTODEV provides other advantages?

If I go with MOTODEV, I assume I would need to uninstall my existing configuration before installing MOTODEV?

TIA.

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Hi Rod,

You're hitting all the good points. :-)

MOTODEV Studio is Eclipse plus the Google ADT plugins and some plugins that we've written ourselves. There are several unique features that are in Studio that aren't in Eclipse or the Google plugins. For example, the database explorer that's in the Database perspective. Also the integrated emulator view and the localization files editor.  We are continually adding new features and these features are useful for Motorola users and the general Android community.

Studio does not impact any other Eclipse installation, including one that is configured to use the Google plugins. You can freely move your projects from one to another.

We are working to make Studio install as a set of plugins, but it's not in the current shipping version.  Stay tuned to the announcements in this forum and/or the MOTODEV Studio Blog.

Good luck with your development.

-E

[simpligility]

I hope motodev will become a bunch of plugins soon. I just updated my Android SDK and now motodev is not working and I also cant update it.

Also once it is just a bunch of plugins I can finally use it with other plugins I need to work efficiently (e.g. egit).

manfred

[EricC]

Hi Manfred,

We're doing our release candidate build today and I hope to have the installers posted by the the end of the month. Preferably before that.  As Andre mentioned in the other thread, you can actually download the prior SDK that works with the ADT plugins that are in Studio.  Unless you need something that is specifically in the latest SDK, my advice is to use the r4 SDK until we enable the new ADT plugins inside the new version of Studio.

Believe me, I don't like the fragile dependency between ADT and the SDK any more than anyone else. I'm working to make this dependency go away, but there are some process issues to fix as well as some code items. We'll get there.

-E

[Gshep]

I'm just starting Eclipse/Javav/Android.  The appeal of the single installer supplied by Motodev is considerable.  Would you recommend using Motodev and then moving to the plug-ins under development by Motodev when they're available?

Most of the instructional literature available is based on plain vanilla Eclipse rather than Motodev.

Thanks,

Glen

[EricC]

Hi Glen,

Welcome to MOTODEV!

If you don't already have an Eclipse environment for some other purpose, such as Java or PHP development, then it's probably easiest to use the MOTODEV Studio installer. You represent one of our typical use cases--the developer who's new to Android/Eclipse.

A lot of the literature is on plain Eclipse because much of Studio is the core IDE. The places where we've added our own functionality, we've documented. This is pretty typical with Eclipse-based products as it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend time re-documenting what's already been done.

Good luck!

-E