New Build System - Android Tools Project Site

2.0.0-beta5 (2016/2/16) 

• Instant Run

• Second attempts at fixing performance regression when building applications with large dependencies.

• Second unrelated fix for issue when application was restarted, coldswap would not use the latest code.

• New shrinker will now keep Application class when used with InstantRun.

• Always for re-dexing when doing a coldswap to ensure latest code changes are pushed.

• Add InstantRun verifier logic for native libraries.

• Add "Provided" dependencies to InstantRun transforms.

• Added DSL flag to disable incremental java compilation : compileOptions {

  incremental=true | false

  }

• Fix Dalvik verifier error when calling super method with short or byte parameter types.

• Added a maxDexProcess to control how many slave dx process can be spawned concurrently : dexOptions {

  maxDexProcess=2
  }

• Disable incremental java compilation when retro-lambda is used.

• Instant Run

• Fixed performance regression when building applications with large dependencies.

• Fixed issue when application was restarted, coldswap would not use the latest code.

• Fixed issue when InstantRun would not clean its state after a coldswap resulting in 'no code change" messages.

• Disabled InstantRun with legacy multidex (<21).

• Disable incremental java compilation when "android-apt" plugin is present.

• Instant Run

• Switched Lollipop and Marshmallow to use native multidex as split apk had installation errors with dex2oat.

• Disable dexInProcess by default unless android {

  dexOptions {
  

  dexInProcess = true
  }

  }

• Instant Run

• Switch Lollipop and Marshmallow to use Split apks

• Disable Coldswap on Dalvik

• Fix for deleted classes that could generate a FileNotFoundException

• Instant Run

• Handle compilation issues : if the build failed during the Java Compilation phase, InstantRun was forgetting some artifacts already built like resources.

• Added more logging to JarMerger to track some duplicate file exception.

• Disable hotswap when new class is added.

• Enabled dexInProcess by default

• Instant Run

• Fix alpha5 reported issues : - cannot build when importing play-services. - zip exception with wrong size entries on some platforms. - make sure we don't add the same artifacts to the built list leading to wrong deployment list.

• New Shrinker

• Fix alpha5 reported issues

• Enable new shrinker with Instant Run.

• Instant Run

• Implemented cold start (when code change cannot be applied with hot swap) - on pre-lollipop releases with Dalvik, restart.dex are produces each time a cold start is necessary - on lollipop, leverage multi dexes to slice applications in multiple dexes and rebuild/redeliver minimum set of dexes necessary. - on marshmallow, leverage split APK to deliver multi dexes.

• Cold start solution is therefore depending on the target platform you are deploying to, please be sure to clearly document the target platform when filing issues.

• in process Dexing on by default.

• Enhanced interactions with the IDE, should reduce a lot the number of rebuild.

• Shrinker

• Can be enabled by setting buildTypes.debug.useProguard false

• Doesn't obfuscate, only removes unused code

• It's supposed to be faster, for iterative development but cannot be used while InstantRun is active yet.

• Resource Shrinker
• A number of bugs in the resource shrinker were fixed, and it now logs all of its operations into resources.txt in the same folder as the proguard log files

• Incremental Java compilation

• Enabled by default, but can be disabled by using ./gradlew -Pandroid.incrementalJavaCompile=false

• Needs gradle 2.10 to work
  

1.5.0-beta1 (2015/11/02)

1.4.0-beta5 (2015/10/03)

• New API to manipulate .class files before they are converted to Dex.

• Custom transforms can be created: extends com.android.build.transform.api.Transform, from artifact com.android.tools.build:transform-api:1.4.0-beta4, and implements one of

• AsInputTransform

• CombinedTransform

• ForkTransform

• NoOpTransform

• We’re looking for feedback on the API.
• More info: http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/transform-api
• Beta4 changes:

• Transform is now an abstract class

• There’s no getType anymore, instead implement the right interface

• Transforms can now be applied to libraries

• transform method now receives a Context object to get access to some information about the task.

1.4.0-beta2 (2015/09/15)

1.3.1 (2015/08/11) 

• added experimental-plugin with ndk support. 
  see http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/gradle-experimental
• When building aar, do not provide automatic @{applicationId} placeholder in manifest merger.
• Introduce support for incremental compilation support with Jill and Jack.
• By default, "LICENSE" and "LICENSE.txt" are excluded when creating an APK.
• This can be changed from the DSL:
  android {
      packagingOptions.excludes = []
  }
• New sourceSets task for inspecting the set of all available source sets.
• Unit tests recognize multi-flavor and per-variant source folders (e.g.testDemoDebug). Android tests recognized multi-flavor source folders.
• Unit testing improvements
• Run javac on main and test sources, even if useJack is true.
• Correctly recognize per-build-type dependencies.
• Added support for controlling the thread pool size for android tasks on the command line or in the gradle.properties file. The following example sets this to 4:
  ./gradlew <tasks> -Pcom.android.build.threadPoolSize=4
• It's now possible to specify instrumentation test runner arguments in build.gradle (in defaultConfig or per flavor):
  android {
      defaultConfig {
          testInstrumentationRunnerArguments size: "medium"
      }
  }
  This can also be done on the command line:
  ./gradlew cC -Pandroid.testInstrumentationRunnerArguments.size=medium

• Mainly a bug fixing release with very few new features.
• Better support for unit tests (libraries can now have unit tests, etc...)
• Added timeOut option to adbOptions to set the timeout when installing APKs on devices.
• Performance improvements during project evaluation.

• Fixed issue with duplicated dependencies on test app that triggered a Proguard failure with duplicate inclusion exception.
• Fix Comparator implementation which did not comply with JDK Comparator contract, was flagged by JDK7 as an error.

• Only variants that package a Wear app will now trigger building them.
• Dependency related issues now fail at build time rather than at debug time. This is to allow running diagnostic tasks (such as 'dependencies') to help resolve the conflict.
• Calling android.getBootClasspath() is now possible again.

• Unit testing support. Unit testing code is run on the local JVM, against a special version of android.jar that is compatible with popular mocking frameworks (e.g. Mockito).
• New tasks: test, testDebug/testRelease, testMyFlavorDebug (when using flavors).
• New source folders recognized as unit tests:
  src/test/java, src/testDebug/java, src/testMyFlavor/java etc.
• New configurations for adding test-only dependencies, e.g.
  testCompile 'junit:junit:4.11'
  testMyFlavorCompile 'some:library:1.0'
• Not compatible with Jack at the moment.
• New option, android.testOptions.unitTests.returnDefaultValues to control the behaviour of the "mockable" android.jar.
• Task names that used to contain 'Test', e.g. 'assembleDebugTest' now use 'AndroidTest', e.g. 'assembleDebugAndroidTest'. This is to distinguish them from the unit test tasks, e.g. 'assembleDebugUnitTest'.
• ProGuard configuration files are no longer applied to the test APK. If minification is enabled, the test APK will be processed by ProGuard only to apply the mapping file generated when minifying the main APK.
• Fixes and changes to the dependency management:
• Properly handle 'provided' and 'package' scopes to do what they should be doing.
• 'provided' and 'package' cannot be used with Android Libraries, and will generate an error
• sync tested and test dependency trees:
• if the same version of an artifact is present in both, it'll get skipped in the test app.
• if the version is different it'll generate a build error. Gradle provides mechanism to resolve this.
• Added support for anyDpi resource qualifier in the resource merger.
• Projects with large number of Android Modules will see evaluation and IDE sync speed improvements (YMMV)

• Enhanced manifest merger logging by specifying library coordinates.
• Allow manifest placeholder to be of any type as long as toString() is implemented.
• Fixed issue where a library with a low targetSdk would add permissions due to a declared permission in a different manifest.
• Better fix for issue where embedding a micro app could add new permissions to the main app manifest.
• Added check for conflict between density splits and resConfig property.
• test applications are now not using multi-dexing, unless they test a library project.
• Fixed lint issues 80872, 80834, 60416, 80837

• Fixed issue in resources shrinking
• Fixed issue in publishNonDefault
• Install task on 21+ devices now does a reinstall again.
• Density split using aapt 21+ now use --preferred-density allowing for missing density version of some bitmaps.
• hasProperty() will now work again on read-only wrapper returned by the variant API.
• Setting applicationId(Suffix) in a Library project will now properly fail.
• Fixed issue where embedding a micro app could add new permissions to the main app manifest.

• Variant Specific BuildConfigField/resValue

0.14.2 (2014/11/10)

• Fix coverage support.
• Fix resource shrinking for style references
• Exclude embedded Wear micro-app from resource shrinking.

0.13.3 (2014/10/06)

0.13.2 (2014/09/26)

• Fixed issue in manifest merger that could put wrong uses-sdk node in the manifest.

0.13.0 (2014/09/18)

• Fix packaging of wear application
• Fix issue with ${applicationId} placeholder when build.gradle doesn't customize it.
• Custom Java code generation steps now part of the source generation steps (fix IDE integration).
• Move unzipped aar back in each project as a temporary fix for a possible race condition.

• Fix merging of the package attribute in the manifest.

• New IDE Model, requires Studio Beta 0.8
• Fixes in the manifest mergers.

• Fix manifest merger bugs (including proper location of the application node in the generated manifest)
• Fix issues where flavors in library with different packages would not generate the right R class.
• Fix issue when parsing BOM in UTF8 encoded XML files.
• Lint fixes

• No release due to a problem during the push.

0.10.2

0.10.1

0.10.0

• Supports Gradle 1.10, 1.11, 1.12.
• Gradle 1.12 will require Studio 0.5.8
• New manifest merger.
• Disabled by default. Enable with android.useOldManifestMerger = false
• See documentation here.
• Test code coverage support with Jacoco
• Enable in the tested Build Type with testCoverageEnabled = true
• HTML and XML Report generated in build/reports/coverage
• Configure version of Jacoco with
  android {
    jacoco {
      version = '0.6.2.201302030002'
    }
  }
• Known issue: This is not compatible with using Dagger.
• Resource Prefix support.
• Setup the prefix in your library with
  android {
    resourcePrefix 'mylib_'
  }
• Starting with Studio 0.5.8 Lint will warn you or resources not using the prefix. (Work in Progress)
• Pre-dex cache (in rootProject/build). Shared across modules and variants. Should speed up builds.
• Exploded aar are extracted in a single location (under rootProject/build) to share across all modules using it. May speed up builds.
• Upgraded to Proguard 4.11. Fixed incremental issues.
• Fixed incremental issues with aidl files.
• variant API to access the proguard task is now under the generic name "obfuscation".

0.9.0

• Compatible with Gradle 1.10 and 1.11
• Using Gradle 1.11 requires Android Studio 0.5.0
• BREAKING CHANGES:
• DSL for Library Projects is now the same as for application projects.
• You can create/configure more build types, in the buildTypes { ... } container.
• You can create product flavors using the productFlavors { ... } container.
• You can create signingConfigs using the signingConfigs { ... } container.
• instrumentTest was renamed androidTest
• This is more inline with what the tests are: all type of tests that are run on Android (unit test, instrumentation test, and later uiautomator)
• Both the default folder names and the android.sourcesets object have been renamed.
• To migrate you can either rename the folders or point the sourcesets to the old location(s).
• Dependency configurations for Library Projects are now provided, compile, and publish.
• Library Publication
• Variants of libraries can now be published, though by default only the default variant is published. This is a work in progress.
• TL;DR: this will NOT fix bug 52962, where release variant of the libraries are always used.
• It does allow you to manually depend on a specific variant of a library. See documentation.
• change the default with android.defaultPublishConfig
• enable publication of other variants with android.publishNonDefault = true
• Reference specific variant with compile project(path: ':project', configuration: 'flavor1Debug')
• See documentation.
• Ability to skip some variants. This allows you to not create all possible combinations of build types/flavors.
  
  • DSL is: android.variantFilter { variant -> ... }
  • The object passed to the closure implements the following methods:
  • public void setIgnore(boolean ignore);
  • @NonNull public ProductFlavor getDefaultConfig();
  • @NonNull public BuildType getBuildType();
  • @NonNull public List<ProductFlavor> getFlavors();
  • To skip a variant, call setIgnore(true).
  • This cannot be used in afterEvaluate.
• The publish and apk configurations don't extend compile anymore but the composite internal configurations are still properly setup (this should not break anything).
• Fix issue where variant specific source folders where not used for java compilation.
• Fix for some Renderscript support mode compatibility issues. Requires Build Tools 19.0.3
• Lots of misc fixes.

• Fix incremental compilation issue with BuildConfig fields and generated Res values.

• Added the ability to create resource values through the DSL.
• You can now use resValue <type>,<name>,<value> on build types and product flavors the same way you can use buildConfigField.
• Fixed package renaming in activity-alias:targetActivity
• Variant API improvements:
• packageName returns the variant's package name
• versionCode returns the (app/test) variant's versionCode
• versionName returns the (app/test/) variant's versionName. Can return null.
• Misc fixes

• Requires Gradle 1.10
• Requires Build-Tools 19.0.0+
• Fixed issue 64302: Add renderscript support mode jar to the dependencies in the IDE model.
• Fixed issue 64094: buildConfigField can now replace previous values inside the same type/flavors.
• Add support for NDK prebuilts in library projects.
• Parallelize pre-dexing to speed up clean builds.
• Incremental dexing re-enabled (though it'll be automatically disabled in some builds for some cases that dx doesn't support yet.)
• Added 'provided' dependency scope for compile only (not packaged) dependencies.
  Additional scope per buildtype and flavors are also available (debugProvided, myFlavorProvided,etc...)
• Lint improvements:
• New "lintVital" task, run automatically as part of assembling release variants, which checks only fatal-severity issues
• Replace Java parser in lint with ECJ; must faster and fixes bug where lint could hang on certain source constructs
• Lint HTML report now writes links to source files and images as URLs relative to the report location
• Variant API improvements:
• getPreBuild() returns the prebuild task for the variant
• getSourceSets() returns the sorted sourcesets for the task, from lower to higher priority
• createZipAlignTask(String taskName, File inputFile, File outputFile)
  This creates and return a new zipalign task. Useful if you have a custom plugin providing custom signing of APKs.
  This also makes the assemble task depend on the new zipalign task, and wires variant.getOutputFile() to return the result of the zipalign task.
• project.android.registerJavaArtifact() now receives a Configuration object to pass the dependencies to the IDE. See artifactApi sample.

• Fix issue with Proguard.
• Add packagingOptions support in Library projects.
• Solve issue with local jar when testing library projects.
• Fix bug with variant.addJavaSourceFoldersToModel
• Add jniLibs folder to source sets for prebuilt .so files.
• Lint fixes:
• fix RTL detector
• fix HTML report to have valid HTML

New Samples: ndkJniLib, genFolderApi2

• DSL to ignore duplicate files
  android {
    packagingOptions {
      exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE.txt'
    }
  }
  
• Fix in the lint task to trigger compilation of the variants

• Fixed ClassNotFoundException:MergingException introduced in 0.6.2

0.6.0

• Better error reporting for cmd line tools, especially if run in parallel in spawned threads
• Fix an issue due to windows path in merged resource files.

• Fix issue in the dependency checker.

• IDE Model is changed and is not compatible with earlier version! Version 0.2.0+ of Studio is required.
• Fixed IDE model to contain the output file even if it's customized through the DSL. Also fixed the DSL to get/set the output file on the variant object so that it's not necessary to use variant.packageApplication or variant.zipAlign
• Fixed dependency resolution so that we resolved the combination of (default config, build types, flavor(s)) together instead of separately.
• Fixed dependency for tests of library project to properly include all the dependencies of the library itself.
• Fixed case where two dependencies have the same leaf name.
• Fixed issue where Proguard rules file cannot be applied on flavors.

• enable crunching for all png files, not just .9.png
• fix dealing with non resource files in res/ and assets/
• fix crash when doing incremental aidl compilation due to broken method name (ah the joy of Groovy...)
• clean older R classes when the app package name has changed.

• Fixed incremental support for resource merging.
• Fixed issue where all pngs would be processed in parallel with no limit on the number of thread used, leading to failure to run aapt.
• Fixed ignoreAsset support in aaptOptions
• Added more logging on failure to merge manifests.
• Added flavor names to the TestServer API.