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InfoQ Homepage News Android Studio 3.3 Brings Official Support for Navigation Editor, Stability Improvements, and More

Android Studio 3.3 Brings Official Support for Navigation Editor, Stability Improvements, and More

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Google has released Android Studio 3.3. This version is mainly focused on bug fixes and stability improvements, however, it also brings official support for Navigation Editor, updates on Kotlin and the IntelliJ Platform, and more.

According to Google, +200 bugs have been fixed on Android Studio 3.3. Google has designed a team called Project Marble to solidify fundamental IDE capabilities and polish user-facing features, specifically looking at reducing the number of crashes, memory leaks, and user-impacting bugs.

The core Android Studio IDE has been updated with improvements from IntelliJ IDEA through the 2018.2.2 release, a significant release that brings support for the Java 11, breakpoints intentions, the MacBook Touch Bar, enhanced version control integrations, and more. In addition, this version bundles Kotlin 1.3.11, which brings new language features such as stable coroutines, contracts, inline classes, and more.

The Navigation Editor is now officially supported; it aims to simplify the design and implementation of navigation between destinations (a specific screen in the app) in an app. The Navigation Editor integrates with the Navigation Architecture Component of Android Jetpack to provides a graphical view for creating the navigation structure of an app.

(Image taken from https://android-developers.googleblog.com)

Android Studio has added a new dialog that enables developers to delete unused directories. When a new major version of Android Studio runs for the first time, it looks for directories containing files that are associated with older versions of Android Studio for which a corresponding installation can't be found. When found, a dialog displays the files, and provides an option to delete them.

(Image taken from https://android-developers.googleblog.com)

Android Studio also included support for building Android App Bundles with full support for Instant Apps. Developers can build and deploy both installed app and Instant App experiences from a single Android Studio project. To start using this, make sure you check the box in "Configure your project > This project will support instant apps" when creating a new project. The following properties will be added in the manifest:

<manifest ... xmlns:dist="http://schemas.android.com/apk/distribution">
<dist:module dist:instant="true" />
...
</manifest>

Developers can now launch multiple instances of the same Android Virtual Device (AVD). This appears good news for developers with continuous integration testing environments who want to run tests in parallel. To launch multiple AVD instances, run the following commands in the shell:

$./emulator -avd  -read-only &
$./emulator -avd  -read-only &

Android Studio now includes support for static code analysis using Clang-Tidy for C++. It is similar to the current lint support for Java and Kotlin; Clang-Tidy helps those who have C++ in their Android app identify common coding errors and bugs. To enable the inspection go to Settings → Editor → Inspections (Preference → Editor → Inspections for MacOS)

Other improvements brought by Android Studio 3.3 include:

  • Improved incremental Java compilation when using annotation processor, requiring Android Gradle plugin 3.3.0 or higher
  • Emulator Snapshot being 8x faster
  • Automatic downloading of SDK components when a project needs a SDK component
  • CMake version 3.10.2 now included with SDK Manager

If you have a previous release of Android Studio installed, all you need to do is to update to the latest version. Otherwise, you can download it here.

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