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InfoQ Homepage News Android Studio 3.1 Aims to Improve App Development Productivity

Android Studio 3.1 Aims to Improve App Development Productivity

The latest release of Android Studio, version 3.1, focuses on improving app development productivity and includes a new C++ performance profiler, command line support for Kotlin lint checks, SQL code completion and improved refactoring, and more.

The following is a list of major highlights from the release notes:

  • The underlying IntelliJ platform has been upgraded to version 2017.3.3, which improves support for Java 8, auto-migration from JUnit 4 to JUnit 5, and more.

  • Android Studio 3.1 improves Kotlin support, introduced in Android Studio 3.0, by including Kotlin 1.2.30. Additionally, running gradlew lint from the command line now also analyze Kotlin classes.

  • SQL editing has been much improved when using the Room library, including support for code completion within an @Query statement, syntax highlighting, and better integration between the SQL model definition and the Java or Kotlin code referencing it.

  • Android Studio 3.1 uses a new DEX compiler, called D8, to transform .class bytecode into bytecode for the Android Runtime. D8 ensures faster conversion, lower memory usage, and improved code generation.

  • C++ developers also benefit from the latest Android Studio release. Large projects should build significantly faster, while the LLDB debugger provides easier to read output for more C++ data structures. Additionally, the CPU profiler now supports sampling native C++ code.

  • The Network Profiler now includes a Thread View to display network activity for each CPU thread that your app has spawn.

  • The Android Emulator in Android Studio 3.1 is now able to resume a session in under six seconds using QuickBoot, which snapshots emulator sessions. Additionally, it includes images for Android 8.0 (API level 26), Android 8.1 (API level 27), and Android P Developer Preview.

Android Studio 3.1 can be downloaded from the official Android Studio download page, or installed directly from within Android Studio 3.0.

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