Office Hours Transcript: 2021-07-13

Hello

I noticed Kotlin has a lot of functionality like "list.last" and "val thirdChar = string[4]", compared to Java. Does something in Kotlin make it easier to implement those or did the authors of the language and stdtlib just take the timer?

tldr: Kotlin has a lot of small convenience that Java lacks. How come?

Take the time, make the effort.

They have added a lot and made it more similar to Kotlin in a lot of regards, but I think a lot is still missing. And I wondered how come that Kotlin has so much "convenience" and how much effort that was.

As I mostly program Java but learned Kotlin on the side I find msyself thinking quite often "this would be easier in Kotlin, I would just do <…> and use <…>".

ok!

And less cruft to work around, less old decisitions.

Hi Mark - I’ve got a question related to some Espresso tests, is that something you can help with?

SO question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68332390/changing-from-deprecated-activitytestrule-to-activityscenariorule-breaks-test

Well, ok - but the problem is that the launch activity is never called in the latter case with scenarioRule.

So - advance it to what?

I actually had originally written this with .launch(), and it failed in the same way

But I’ll review and try

Sorry - I mean I originally wasn’t using a rule, I was getting the scenario in @Before and doing the launch

Thanks for the link though. I have another question when it’s my turn again

ok

I have nothing like Crashlytics or Firebas in my app, only the normal reporting that comes with the Play Console. I wondering if I should have something like that. What do you think?

(which is what I’m asking for :) )

The Play Store usually offers very little information about crashes and such, so I wondered and wanted your opinion.

@Kai - fwiw I’m using Crashlytics/Firebase, and it does give some more details.

But I can also tell you that I know some folks at Twitter, and at least as of a year or so ago they were not using it - they were using home-grown stuff (larger, highly technical and advanced dev team though).

Well, we have a dev team of 1, so… ;-)

But thanks for the opinions

Sure - this is a pretty strange one I think. Also related to Espresso stuff.

They recently updated a number of their libraries, also JUnit dependencies.

So I updated my gradle dependency as normal

All of a sudden, my .aab file gained weight - ~7MB.

I did some painful (one at a time, backing up to the prior version) of all the new dependency versions.

Turns out from that exercise it was espresso-contrib

SO item here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68340598/why-does-creating-a-release-build-include-jdk-11-source

My question: although my sleuthing did in fact point directly to this as a problem, I find it hard to believe.

Is there anything I could be doing that would introduce a dependency to include the jdk11 source?

Have not.

I’m sure they will ask for it though - I filed an issue with the androidx.test team

But I have to have it in the regular app because I’m using idlingResource

So a test won’t start until my splash activity launches the "main" activity and it makes it through the onResume() stuff.

yes understood

ok I have one more when it’s back to me

Yes, another great and easy one: What’s advice that you would give someone that wants to be an Android freelander? :D

Yes

(Item 1: Learn to type…) ;-)

More the first.

Even though it would probably mean the second one too.

OK here is one

So in my pre-launch report for my app on Open Beta I see 20 warnings being reported having to do with a "StrictMode policy violation", example:

StrictMode policy violation: android.os.strictmode.NonSdkApiUsedViolation: Landroid/graphics/FontFamily;->abortCreation()V
at android.os.StrictMode.lambda $static$1(StrictMode.java:428)
at android.os.-$$Lambda $StrictMode$lu9ekkHJ2HMz0jd3F8K8MnhenxQ.accept(Unknown Source:2)
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethodInternal(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.getPublicMethodRecursive(Class.java:2075)
at java.lang.Class.getMethod(Class.java:2063)
at java.lang.Class.getMethod(Class.java:1690)
at androidx.core.graphics.TypefaceCompatApi26Impl.obtainAbortCreationMethod(TypefaceCompatApi26Impl.java:343)
at androidx.core.graphics.TypefaceCompatApi26Impl.<init>(TypefaceCompatApi26Impl.java:88)
at androidx.core.graphics.TypefaceCompatApi28Impl.<init>(TypefaceCompatApi28Impl.java:36)
at androidx.core.graphics.TypefaceCompat.<clinit>(TypefaceCompat.java:53)
at androidx.core.graphics.TypefaceCompat.create(Unknown Source:0)
at androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView.setTypeface(AppCompatTextView.java:718)
at android.widget.TextView.resolveStyleAndSetTypeface(TextView.java:2037)
at android.widget.TextView.setTypefaceFromAttrs(TextView.java:2008)
at android.widget.TextView.applyTextAppearance(TextView.java:3640)
at android.widget.TextView.<init>(TextView.java:1498)
at android.widget.TextView.<init>(TextView.java:869)
at androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView.<init>(AppCompatTextView.java:102)
at androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView.<init>(AppCompatTextView.java:97)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance0(Native Method)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:343)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.createView(LayoutInflater.java:647)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.createViewFromTag(LayoutInflater.java:790)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.createViewFromTag(LayoutInflater.java:730)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.rInflate(LayoutInflater.java:863)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.rInflateChildren(LayoutInflater.java:824)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:515)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:423)
at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:374)
at androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatDelegateImpl.setContentView(AppCompatDelegateImpl.java:699)
at androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity.setContentView(AppCompatActivity.java:195)
at com.reddragon.intouch.ui.SplashActivity.onCreate(SplashActivity.java:96)

And the layout it is complaining about

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".ui.SplashActivity">

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.Guideline
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:id="@+id/horizontalGuideline"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
    app:layout_constraintGuide_percent="0.5" />

<androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="0dp"
    android:text="@string/app_initializing"
    android:textStyle="italic"
    android:textColor="@color/white"
    android:gravity="center_horizontal|bottom"
    app:autoSizeMaxTextSize="48sp"
    app:autoSizeMinTextSize="16sp"
    app:autoSizeStepGranularity="1sp"
    app:autoSizeTextType="uniform"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/horizontalGuideline"
    app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"/>

<androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView
    android:id="@+id/stageTextView"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="0dp"
    android:text="@string/app_initializing_checkinglogin"
    android:textStyle="italic"
    android:textColor="@color/colorAccent"
    android:gravity="center_horizontal"
    app:autoSizeMaxTextSize="24sp"
    app:autoSizeMinTextSize="12sp"
    app:autoSizeStepGranularity="1sp"
    app:autoSizeTextType="uniform"
    app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/horizontalGuideline"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"/>

</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

Is this anything I need to worry about? How do I "fix" it?

OK - so as I suspected, it’s out of my control, it’s only a warning, so don’t lose any sleep over it, right?

Which team should get this issue? Or do I just file a general bug?

(i.e. using the frown face in the IDE)

ok

Thanks Mark!

Thanks for your time. Have a good time and stay healthy.