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During its Android development summit, Google announced today a number of new tools and features for developers who are writing applications for its mobile operating system. Some are not surprising, including support for the latest version of the Kotlin language, increasingly popular in the Android developer ecosystem, as well as new features for Android Jetpack tools and APIs, as well as for Android Studio. FDI. The biggest surprise, though, is probably the launch of the In-App Updates API.
Although the name does not exactly set the tone for a revolutionary feature, it's a big problem. With this new API, developers now have two new ways to get users to update their app.
"It's something developers have been asking us for a long time – let's say you have an app and want to make sure the user is using the latest version," said Stephanie Saad Cuthbertson, senior director of Google for Business. Android product management and developer relationships. . "It's something that developers really fear."
Suppose your application contains a major bug (it happens …) and you want to make sure that each user performs the upgrade immediately. you will soon be able to show them a full screen lockout message that will be displayed during the first restart of the application and during the application of the update. This obviously only concerns major bugs. The second option offers more flexibility and allows the user to continue using the application while the update is downloaded. Developers can fully customize these update streams.
Currently, the new update API is in the early stages of testing with a few partners and is expected to open soon to more developers.
As Cuthbertson has pointed out, in recent years, the team has focused on the need to give developers what they want. The poster for this, she noted, is the kotlin language. "It was not a language designed by Google and maybe not the obvious choice – but it was really the best choice," she said. "If you look at the last few years, you can really see an investment that started with the IDE. In fact, it is only five years old and since then we have put it in place, entirely based on the comments of the developers. "
Today, the company announced that 46% of professional developers are now using Kotlin and that more than 118,000 new Kotlin projects have been launched in Android Studio in the last month (and this is only for users who have chosen share statistics with Google). is definitely paying off.
One thing developers have recently complained about is that the build times in Android Studio have slowed down. "What we've seen internally is that build times are getting faster, but what external developers have told us is that they are getting slower," said Cuthbertson. "So we started benchmarking, both internally under controlled conditions, but also for all those who subscribed to it, analyzing the entire ecosystem. What the team discovered, is that Gradle, the heart of the Android Studio build system, is going much faster. , but the system and platform on which you build also have a major impact. Cuthbertson noted that the Spectrum and Meltdown patches have a major impact on Windows and Linux users, for example, just like custom plugins. Thus, in the future, the team creates new profiling and analysis tools to allow developers to better understand their generation time. Google will build more of its own plug-ins to accelerate performance.
Most of these software are not yet available in the current beta version of Android Studio 3.3 (and version 3.3 beta 3 is also available today), but Android users Studio will probably be pleased to learn that Chrome OS will get the official support of the software. IDE early next year, using the new ability of Chrome OS to run Linux applications.
The company also today announced new Jetpack architecture component libraries for Navigation and Work Manager, which allow developers to more easily add Android navigation principles to their applications and perform tasks. in the background without having to write a lot of standard code. Android application packages, which allow developers to modularize their applications and ship on-demand, also receive updates, as well as Instant Apps, that users can run without the applications. install. The use of Web URLs for Instant Apps is now optional and their build in Android Studio has become easier.
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