How do I use AIDL tool from command line using SDK sample code?

Question

My question concerns using aidl.exe (on a Windows system) from the command line. This question has nothing to do with Eclipse, Netbeans, etc.

Included with the Android SDK are the following three AIDL definition files:

IRemoteService.aidl IRemoteServiceCallback.aidl ISecondary.aidl

located in the following directory:

C:\android-sdk-windows\platforms\android-2.1\samples\ApiDemos\src\com\example\android\apis\app

For the sake of simplicity, I copied aidl.exe into the above directory. Then, from a console Window, I successfully used the following two commands to generate .java files:

C:\Android-project\ApiDemos\src\com\example\android\apis\app>aidl IRemoteServiceCallback.aidl C:\Android-project\ApiDemos\src\com\example\android\apis\app>aidl ISecondary.aidl

Invoking these commands produced the files IRemoteServiceCallback.java and ISecondary.java, respectively. So far so good.

I note that both .aidl files are simple; they include no 'import' statements.

The remaining .aidl file, IRemoteService.aidl, does include the following import statement on line 19:

import com.example.android.apis.app.IRemoteServiceCallback;

The problem arises when I run the AIDL tool on this file:

  C:\Android-project\ApiDemos\src\com\example\android\apis\app>aidl IRemoteService.aidl

Doing so causes the following error message to be printed in the console window:

IRemoteService.aidl:19: couldn't find import for class com.example.android.apis.app.IRemoteServiceCallback

The AIDL tool evidently could not locate the IRemoteServiceCallback.aidl file in the same directory in which it was running. According to the AIDL tool's "usage" message, there is a command that apparently can be used to resolve this problem:

  -I<DIR>    search path for import statements.

The problem: I have not been able to specify -I in such a way as to avoid the error message and have the AIDL tool generate a .java file from the .aidl file with an 'import' statement. (Note: I set the Windows environment variable 'path' to my current directory.) Here are a few variations I've tried:

-Ic:\com\example\android\apis\app
-Ic:/com/example/android/apis/app
-I.\
-I.

I must be missing something simple. Surprisingly, even though I've seen variations of this question posted in various places, I have yet to see an answer or any documentation about AIDL command line usage (other than the aidl.exe USAGE info). Can someone clue me in?

Thanks, Matt

Answer 1

As you mention, there isn't much documentation.

So if you enable verbose build output in Eclipse (under Window > Preferences > Android > Build, I think), you can see in the Console what commands, including aidl and aapt, are executed when the Eclipse plugin does a build.

Alternatively, if you can understand C you could check out the aidl source code in the AOSP.

Answer 2

Hi all, I found the solution: you must provide the folder path to the source files, but WITHOUT the path after the base src folder. So, in your case the right command is: C:\Android-project\ApiDemos\src\com\example\android\apis\app>aidl -IC:\Android-project\ApiDemos\src\ IRemoteService.aidl