About Android IDE

Question

Right now I'm using Eclipse for Android development, but my computer is kind of old and I like responsive development environments.

I've tried using VIM, Emacs and TextMate but I'm missing every feature in the Eclipse Android plugin:

• Auto generate R class
• Check for errors & warnings on code
• Auto completion
• Deploy to device or emulator
• Integrate with DDMS
• The list goes to infinity ...

I know Eclipse is the best for what I want to do, but if I want to use any editor, what do you recommend to achieve a not so frustrating Android development experience?

Answer 1

Take a look at the ant build script that gets generated from android create project.

You can see what commands it runs, and so can maybe automate of this yourself, like running aapt when you see your res/ folder has changed.

As for auto-complete, well you will need a Java-capable IDE for that. I don't know what IDE you could use that wouldn't slow your PC down.

Similarly, all the other operations you require, these can be done from the command line using adb, by running ddms or using telnet to communicate with emulators. Though if you want to run an Android emulator on an already-slow PC, you're probably not in for a pleasant time.

Answer 2

Try to turn off all automatic features. By default, Eclipse will auto build workspaces and projects every time our code change, checking some online updates, capturing Usage Data Collector. All those would slow us down. Try to turn them off and switch to 'manual mode'.