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Android tips and tricks

What are Gradle tasks and how can I get the list of available tasks in my project?⚓

A gradle task is a process you can run with gradle. You can run these tasks by running gradle TASK-TO-RUN in your Command Line / Terminal.

A standard Android Gradle project includes a lot of tasks by default, things like:

  • androidDependencies - Displays the Android dependencies of the project.
  • assemble - Assembles all variants of all applications and secondary packages.
  • assembleAndroidTest - Assembles all the Test applications.
  • clean - Deletes the build directory

You can get the base task list by calling gradle tasks in your Android app's directory, or to see all the available tasks you can call gradle tasks --all.

Running gradle tasks you'll get a list of available Gradle tasks in the format:

$ gradle task

:tasks

------------------------------------------------------------
All tasks runnable from root project
------------------------------------------------------------

Android tasks
-------------
androidDependencies - Displays the Android dependencies of the project.
signingReport - Displays the signing info for each variant.
sourceSets - Prints out all the source sets defined in this project.

Build tasks
-----------
assemble - Assembles all variants of all applications and secondary packages.
assembleAndroidTest - Assembles all the Test applications.
assembleDebug - Assembles all Debug builds.
assembleRelease - Assembles all Release builds.
...

You can run any of the tasks on bitrise from a Script step by calling gradle task-name-to-run (for example: gradle assemle) or by using our Gradle Runner step (https://github.com/bitrise-io/steps-gradle-runner) and specifying the task as the value of the gradle_task input.

Instead of running gradle directly, you should run the gradle commands through gradlew (the Gradle Wrapper)! The Gradle Runner step does this, and as you can see it in the related input description of the step:

Using a Gradle Wrapper (gradlew) is strongly suggested, as the wrapper is what makes sure that the right Gradle version is installed and used for the build.

You can find more information about the Gradle Wrapper (gradlew), and about how you can generate one (if you would not have one already) in the official guide at: https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/gradle_wrapper.html.

How to install an additional Android SDK package⚓

The preferred way to do this is to use the Install missing Android tools step. Please only use a Script solution if you really have to, as you'll have to update the Script if the Android tools change (which did happen).

All you have to do is to add a Script step to your workflow, and use the Android sdkmanager tool to install the additional packages you want to.

As an example, to install the Android SDK v18 and the related build-tools v18.0.1, you can add a Script step (can be the very first step in the Workflow) with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
# fail if any commands fails
set -e
# debug log
set -x

# write your script here
sdkmanager "platforms;android-18"
sdkmanager "build-tools;18.0.1"

You can get the full list of available packages by running: sdkmanager --list --include_obsolete --verbose. You can run this on your own machine if you have $ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin in your $PATH. If not then you can run it with /PATH/TO/ANDROID-SDK-HOME/tools/bin/sdkmanager ....

Enable Gradle debug options⚓

If your Gradle build fails and you can't find any information in the logs you can try to call it with --stacktrace --debug flags (ex: gradle ... --stacktrace --debug) to get more detailed logs.

In most cases --stacktrace should be enough, and the Gradle Runner step includes this flag by default.

Run a bitrise Android build on your Mac/PC, with Docker⚓

You can run your build on your Mac/PC, inside the same docker container you use on bitrise.io, to fully test your build in an identical environment! You can find the detailed guide here: How to run your build locally in Docker

Memory (RAM) limit⚓

You can specify the amount allowed RAM for the JVM by adding two Environment Variables to your Workflow, e.g. as App Env Vars:

  • GRADLE_OPTS: '-Dorg.gradle.jvmargs="-Xmx2048m -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError"'
  • _JAVA_OPTIONS: "-Xms512m -Xmx1024m"

This method can be used to limit the allowed RAM the Gradle JVM process can use, which can be useful in case there's not enough RAM available in the system.

Emulators⚓

You can find and use our Android emulator steps to create & boot emulators: http://www.bitrise.io/integrations.

First you have to create an emulator with a Create Android emulator step, where you can set the Android version and a couple of other parameters for the new emulator, then you can boot this emulator with the Start Android emulator step, which makes sure that the emulator is booted and ready for subsequent steps.

Emulator with Google APIs⚓

Instead of using a Script step to create an android emulator please use the Create Android emulator step! There are simply too many edge cases to cover here, as well as the commands and working configurations change quite frequently.

The section below is kept here for referencing purposes, and might be outdated.

Note about Android SDK versions: at this time there are lots of known issues reported for Android Emulators with Android SDK version 22 & 23 when combined with Google Play services (see 1 and 2). The script above creates an emulator with SDK version 21, which should work properly with Google Play services.

There are possible workarounds for newer versions (see 1 and 2), but that requires some customization in your project.

Installing / Using Java version X⚓

Java 8 is now pre-installed

Java 8 is now the pre-installed Java version on the Bitrise.io Linux Stack. This section is kept here for future reference, in case you'd need another Java version.

If you'd need a Java / JDK version which is not preinstalled on the Android stacks, you can follow this guide to install it. This example will install Java/JDK 8, please adapt it to the version you need.

If your build requires JDK 8, you can install and activate it with a Script step:

#!/bin/bash
set -ex

add-apt-repository -y ppa:openjdk-r/ppa
apt-get update -qq
apt-get install -y openjdk-8-jdk
update-java-alternatives -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-amd64
echo "done"

That's all, just add the Script step to the Workflow with the content above, and start a new build. This Script step can be the very first step in the Workflow, as it does not depend on anything else.