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InfoQ Homepage News Android Studio 1.3 Does C/C++ and More Material Design

Android Studio 1.3 Does C/C++ and More Material Design

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Google has announced Android Studio at I/O 2015, some of the most interesting features being: integration with JetBrains CLion, Android Design Support library, services integrations, more annotations and better emulator performance.

Google has partnered with JetBrains and has added CLion to Android Studio to provide support for C and C++. CLion offers all the basic functionality of a modern IDE: Code Completion, Code Generation, Quick Fixes (including between C++ and JNI code), Refactoring, Code Navigation and others. JetBrains announced CLion 1.0 about a month ago.

The Android Design Support library, which provides support for adding material design components and patterns, has added a number of components and features: Floating Action Button, Toolbar with Motion, TextInputLayout, Snackbar, Tab Layout, AppBar Layout, and CollapsingToolbarLayout. They are backward compatible with API v7, enabling developers to add a material design flavor to their apps.

There are 13 new annotations, including @WorkerThread to specify that a method should be called from a worker thread and not the UI thread, @Size to set a size constraint that should be respected by a caller, @IntRange/@FloatRange to specify an integer/float range for a value, @CheckResult to tell clients to validate a value, @CallSuper forcing one who overrides a method to call the super method, @ColorInt to flag an integer as representing a color, @RequiresPermission to signal that a certain method needs a certain permission. To support the new permission model introduced in Android M, Studio now has code completion for working with permissions.

Android Studio now is aware of various services, starting with Google Ads, Analytics, Sign-in, GCM, and others will be added later. Besides connecting to them, Studio will generate basic code for working with the respective services.

Regarding the emulator, Google has focused on stability and performance. They say the emulator is fast enough if run on a proper machine and properly configured. They have included support for a fingerprint reader. An Android Auto emulator is supposed to be provided later this year.

Android Studio 1.3 is available through the canary channel. Following a two-weeks cycle, the IDE will be moved through the Dev channel, then Beta, then released as Stable.

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