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With the release of Solar2D Daily Build 2016.2886, Android Studio app templates and samples were made available for Solar2D Enterprise. The IDE integration could bring useful tools to the aid of developers and it will allow quicker code iteration in the future.
Enterprise with the Ant build System will be a thing of the past very soon, as all new projects are required to use Android Studio templates. Existing Android Enterprise projects should be migrated to Android Studio, since Solar2D Enterprise will drop their support for Ant project model in September or October this year.
Here are several features coming with Android Studio that makes development easier.
Code completion
Android Studio has an exciting feature known as real-time code auto completion. If you can’t remember the complete code, auto completion can give you suggestions as you type in. The editor will continually refine the suggestions as you progress. Pressing the ‘enter’ key will select the highlighted item on the list shown. There is also a keyboard shortcut for manually invoking the feature by which you can edit existing codes after pressing Ctrl-Space.
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Static Code Analyzer
This is a Java code inspection tool. The main use is detecting bugs, styling issues in the code, typos, simplifying complex code snippets etc.
JAR decompilation
This tool will help to analyze performance issues such as crashing, if there is a jar file involved in any random library that you have no access to the source code. This way, there could be better understanding of the underlying problem.
Support for AVD testing
The great benefit about using Android Studio is its integrated support for Android virtual device (AVD) testing. For Solar2D Enterprise, there is better testing performance and IDE integration being offered now than earlier. But one should be aware of the few exceptions and limitations of testing with AVD, such as inability to test for several Google files, slow booting etc.
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Do away with shell scripts
There is no more need of using the command line as Android Studio for Solar2D is here. Instead, you can do everything from building through deployment via this interface.
Prevents runtime issue due to new API levels
Android Studio warns when you use any APIs that are above your existing minSdkVersion. Thus you can prevent your app built with prior SDKs from breaking, when it tries to call unexisting APIs.
Integrate common external libraries easier
Libraries such as the Android Support Libraries and Google Play Services can be added to your projects effortlessly with simple lines of codes as dependencies with Android Studio.
