hello, Gabriele

how can I help you today?

hi :) today I'm here just to observe :P

all right? :)

sure, though, at the moment, there is nothing really to observe

ahah, I've noticed

if you come up with a question, let me know

sure, thank you :)

right now I'm reading about the navigation drawer, for my irc client

Hello

hello, Ken!

Ken: Gabriele is just hanging out here at the moment, so... do you have a question?

Sorry I'm a bit late. I was directed to a Google hangout instead. Sigh.

huh?

Yes.

Sorry. Quick explanation

I added the event to my Google calendar

that directed me to the Google Hangout for some odd reason

I closed it and came here. No prob.

considering that I don't use Google Hangouts, that is definitely odd

but, you're here now! :-)

Yes, but I think it was a function of the event being on my Google calendar.

so... how can I help you today?

hi Ken

Hi Gabriele

Mark, I've been wanting to meet you for some time

I'm a speaker on the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference tour (http://nofluffjuststuff.com)

and I regularly give talks on Android development

I always mention your book as the only one worth getting :)

yup, I spoke at the NFJS Web Experience one back in 2010 or so

thanks for the book shout-out! :-)

Rich Web Experience, you mean?

yeah, that's it

That's in December in Ft. Lauderdale every year

maybe it was 2009

yes

Very easy to get speakers to go there :)

it was early enough that mobile didn't warrant its own event yet :-)

Anyway, it turns out I'm also working on a book

It's for O'Reilly, as part of their Gradle series

ah, OK

Those are short (roughly 100 page) books on topics in Gradle

Mine is going to be the "Gradle for Android" book

So I've been spending lots of time on that.

you working with Gradleware on it, or is this indepenent of them?

I'm independent, but I know a lot of people at Gradleware and they're going to own it in the end

They'll pay me royalties, but own the copyright

Not nearly the cool situation you have

I've also been talking to Xav Ducrohet about it as well

hey, if you can get Xav's time, that's worth more than gold, or even ink-jet ink

Next week at the SpringOne2GX conference (http://springone2gx.com) I'm giving a Gradle for Android talk

absolutely

But you can imagine how happy I was to see your version 6 come out this week

you and me both

(me too)

I described is "the literary equivalent of passing a kidney stone"

I have more background in Groovy and associated technologies than in Android

hah

My day job is teaching technical training classes in areas related to Java and open source

very cool

mostly that's been Groovy, Grails, Spring, and Hibernate/JPA

but lately I've been getting more Android stuff

I still have a lot to learn, though I'm making progress

Again, your book is the best for that

glad you like it!

Yup, and I'm really glad you've finished the pivot away from ActionBarSherlock

yeah, well, 2800 page books steer like battleships

The joke I tell in class about your book is

I can't imagine how long the "not busy" coder's guide would be

ahah

I can't even imagine maintaining a monster like that

let's just say that the choice of title didn't quite line up with how things played out

so it would seem

FYI, my published book is "Making Java Groovy", http://manning.com/kousen

It's about adding Groovy to existing Java development to make life easier

sounds good

Of course, that also means I'm quite interested in Cedric Champeau's efforts to implement Groovy on Android

and I seem to recall some tweets going out that Groovy now runs well on Android

Which he's also talking about next week

I'd say it runs, but it's not even really beta yet

ah, OK

But it will only get better

Anyway, I'd love to be able to talk to you about issue in the book as they arise

with full credit, of course

You already know Hans, I'm sure

Hans Dockter

yes, we've met a couple of times

Sorry I'm going on and on like this, but I've been meaning to talk to you for months :)

Apparently you don't do email, or at least you don't make an email address easy to find on your web site

spammers seem to have no problem with it :-)

Wow. That's annoying.

But I understand if you don't want to give it away

partly, I don't publicize it because I used to get a lot of emails from random people asking questions, rather than using Stack Overflow, etc.

I figured as much

and one-on-one support by email isn't scaleable

but pretty much anything @commonsware.com will get to me

I just want to be able to potentially use you as a reviewer, or whatever involvement you feel is worth your time

officially, I am mmurphy@commonsware.com

much appreciated, thanks

I won't give that out without your permission

I'm at ken.kousen@kousenit.com

My last name is pronounced like the relative (Cousin)

So my company (Kousen IT, Inc) sounds like it's from the Addams Family

that's funny

It was my wife's idea

Now on to some technical stuff, unless Gabriele would like to get a word in edgewise

normally I rotate between attendees

but Gabriele had indicated when entering the room that she was just here to monitor

Ah. Feel free to interrupt if necessary.

Gabriele: again, if you come up with a question, just chime in

I've been an Eclipse user since about 2001

sure, thank you :)

and I still think that Eclipse ADT is a better Eclipse than Eclipse

i.e., more stable, better performing, etc

but clearly Android Studio is the future

ah, so there is some difference, I always hated eclipse TT

This, therefore, is the year I've been switching over to IntelliJ IDEA

yes, Xav's non-answer in the Fireside Chat made it clear that official Eclipse support is waning

and Android Studio specifially

specifically

Yes, I asked Xav about it at the Gradle summit and he wouldn't commit himself, but I think it's obvious

me too, I've first switched to IntelliJ and then to Android Studio

Eclipse ADT hasn't been updated in quite a while and still doesn't really understand Gradle

though it can generate Gradle build files

Since AS can import Eclipse projects directly, my guess is that

there are rumblings that ADT development might be taken up by more of a community effort

the generated gradle build (by Eclipse) is only there so you can have some team members using each tool

or use Gradle for CI servers, etc.

Importing a project as a whole into AS appears to be a one-way process

if you let AS move the files around, yes

That's what happens when you import an existing Eclipse projet

I have no idea how you'd teach Eclipse where resources are inside of src/main, for example

It looks like you can't go back

it makes a copy of the project, so your original is untouched

That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen

what do you check into source control?

I guess if you imported as a Gradle build (i.e., point to the build.gradle file) rather than the whole project, you could still work on both

right

and that's what I did in the book, in general

Ah

most of the projects have a build.gradle, based off of an Eclipse export, so that both IDEs can use the same project files

Also, of course ADT doesn't know anything about flavors

more importantly, it doesn't know anything about sourcesets

and it makes so much more sense for the tests to be inside the project

it does simplify matters

Actually, with the gradle build you can customize the source sets, but not for build types and flavors

in ADT, I mean

One issue I have with AS, though

If you want to make a new flavor, it seems you have to build the whole directory structure yourself

both src subdirectories, res folders, etc

I imagine they'll have a wizard for that eventually

that should be generated from the gradle build, I would think

I haven't run into one just yet

okay, so I'm not missing anything

I didn't realize until very recently

that if you open the "terminal" window in AS

you can run gradlew right from there

yeah, I had heard that, but I haven't played with it

I always went out to the shell myself and changed directories to my projet

and I have no idea what that might behave like on Windows

it's much easier than I thought it would be

that I don't know.

I'm on a MBP

(sorry; I have my MyPagerAdapter extending FragmentPagerAdapter, inside getPageTitle I'd like to use getString, one way is to pass the adapter the context, is there a better way avoiding this?)

and I'm a Linux guy

Gabriele: not really

getString() needs a Context

you'll see in my ViewPager examples that I pass a Context to the PagerAdapter for this very reason

thank you, Mark

yes

since the PagerAdapter is more or less "owned" by the activity, you shouldn't run into any leaks or anything

Mark, do you always use fragments even if you only need a single activity?

Ken: not in the real world

really? that's very interesting

I think I get them, but they feel way too complicated

which is why you use them where needed

especially if you want each to define an interface that the activity needs to implement

I've been moving more into the event bus model for that particular aspect

and the book uses fragments in places where I wouldn't normally use them, mostly for repetition

but that's not built into Android, right? You need a third party library for it?

the event bus, I mean

LocalBroadcastManager is in the Android Support package

though I use greenrobot's EventBus usually

more flexible, less code

greenrobot has that ORM tool, too, right?

yes, though their event bus implementation is separate

like Square's Otto, greenrobot's EventBus is a port of Guava's EventBus to be more Android-y

such as knowing about the main application thread

I was thinking of using the ORM tool as a library project, just to demonstrate library projects

that seems a bit like swatting a fly with a Buick

I'd pick a smaller library

I like how they're multi-project builds in gradle, but haven't used on yet

Yes, you're probably right

I mean, if you wanted to demonstrate an ORM, greenrobot'

er, greenrobot's is probably a fine choice

that's the one I was thinking of

but it's probably a bit involved for just demonstrating how to consume an AAR from a repo

Yeah, you're right

I need something simpler for that

Do you do any unit testing?

if I were in your shoes, I'd grab a library that implements a widget from the Android Arsenal

wait, what's that?

some, yes

top catalog of Android libraries out there at the moment

Sweet. I'll check that out

For unit testing, I've been using robotium, with the Solo class

it's really functional testing, but it works

they say from the gradle build all the tests run in parallel

but when I do it, you can watch them one after the other

I haven't played with Robolectric, though it's pretty popular

last I checked, Roboelectric and Gradle were two great tastes that don't taste so great together

leastways, they were having some problems

I've heard that too

Maybe I'll wait and see on it

this is based on recollections from adt-dev discussions

Ironically, I don't think Xav sees the lack of true unit testing as a problem

Coming from server side Java, that seems strange to me

especially because what do you do on a CI server?

run tests in a headless emulator

I assume you don't have an emulator running on the server the whole time, right?

headless emulator -- sounds familiar, but I haven't looked at that

is it a command line option?

yes, though I forget what it is

I can look it up

I just needed to know to look for it :)

if your CI server doesn't have a GUI (e.g., console Linux box), you can still use the emulator

it just won't actually render anything, though it behaves like it does

good enough for the tests

Are you a genymotion person?

no

I just started using it

in part because I have a fairly kick-ass notebook

and a wall full of hardware

(well, OK, technically a door full of hardware)

I've found that if I need to use the GPU on my machine

which I always need to do in the newer emulators

then I can only run one or at most two at once

and I've got 16 GB of RAM :(

but with genymotion, it works

a door full of hardware sounds like a great name for a band

I think I ran out of questions at the moment

OK

Maybe I'll send you my slides after the conference, if you're interested

if they're publicly published somewhere, shoot me a link

All the talks are going to be recorded, so I can let you know about that

I'm using x86 emulator, it seems a lot better

Anyway, I hope to contact you periodically, or show up here on occasion

absolutely. HAXM rules

I must warn you...

while these office hours are held in a "chat room"...

the normal flow is focused on questions and answers

where I rotate among attendees to try to cover everyone's questions

today was more of a free-form chat

that's fine. How many people do you normally get?

I'd say the average is about two

sometimes more, sometimes less

Oh, one last question. If I want an app to load on startup, how do I do that?

that depends on what you really mean

are you trying to display a UI on startup?

For example, my wife has a phone that starts the camera when she rotates it a certain way

I figure I could do that with a broadcast receiver, right?

But I don't want to have to start it, or otherwise why not just start the camera?

maybe, but I doubt it

it's possible that ACTION_CONFIGURATION_CHANGED broadcasts would cover your needs

and I forget off the top of my head if you can register for that in the manifest or not

So just use an implicit intent and go from there?

well, more using an <intent-filter> and listening for the implicit Intent

yes, that's what I thought

but it is possible that ACTION_CONFIGURATION_CHANGED, like ACTION_BATTERY_CHANGED, cannot be registered for in the manifest

because it might get broadcast too frequently

hmm

and, ACTION_CONFIGURATION_CHANGED is only for configuration changes, not arbitrary movement

I didn't see any intent strings about the accelerometer

there aren't any

you have to use SensorManager and register a listener

so, it's entirely possible that the only SDK-level solution would be to have an everlasting service

which I am not a fan of

probably not what the user wants, either

well, it was just a thought

now, if your wife's phone shipped with this capability, they probably implemented special hooks for it at a lower level

where they can do it much more efficiently

makes sense

what do you think L will eventually stand for?

Licorice? Lollipop? Lemon (hopefully not)?

I think Vegas still has Lollipop in the lead

Lemon Meringue Pie is coming on strong

hah

any idea when they'll announce that?

in time for the holiday season

which, in Google's case, means anytime before Thanksgiving

and often times not a lot before Thanksgiving

sounds good

How long do your chats go?

unlike Apple, Google is big on the surprise announcement approach for SDK releases

an hour

Are you impressed by Wear yet?

um, it's OK

yeah, that's my impression too

still waiting for a compelling use case

it'll take another two generations of hardware before it's svelte enough IMHO

and, I agree, I'm short on use cases

I guess we'll find out what Apple thinks next week

yeah, if they release an iWatch, it's likely to push the design envelope ahead more rapidly

Plus they're supposedly doing something with payments

Where are you based, btw?

my Secret Mountain Lair is in Pennsylvania

My family lives in York (I live in Connecticut)

My sister is in the Philadelphia area

I'm about 90 minutes from York, in the Allentown area

Been there several times :)

I think I'm all set

One joke for you

You may laugh at Google glass now

but in the end, it's step 1 on the way to an Iron Man suit :)

I'm holding out for repulsors

that would be seriously cool

Especially now that Star Trek communicators are so disappointingly limited

BTW, the chat transcripts are archived at http://commonsware.com/office-hours/

I will scrub out your email address, if you like

ah, that's helpful, thanks

no, it's already all over the web

but thanks for the offer

and that's a wrap for today's chat

thank you Mark

yes, thanks

next one is Tuesday at 7:30pm US Easter Time

er, US Eastern Time

have a nice weekend! :)

you too!

you too