Wikitude SDK and Android Studio

Phil

Update (August 2017): A developer insight into Wikitde SDK 7- Object recognition, multi-target tracking and SLAM based instant tracking

Android Studioandroid-studio-logo-1 the new IDE by Google for developing Android apps was announced back at Google I/O 2013. The adapted IDE, which in its core is based on IntelliJ IDEA, has been available since December last year. This year Google I/O also brought news, that the Android NDK will be fully covered as well. Something we are looking forward to use internally.

Google made it clear from the beginning that Android Studio will replace the existing Android Developer Tools (ADT) for Eclipse and that Google intends to cease support for Eclipse somewhen in the future. As we know now since the 26th of June from a blog post by Jamal Eason, Product Manager Android at Google, support for Eclipse will stop entirely by end of this year (2015).

How does that relate to you as a developer?

  • Migrate your projects to Android Studio projects
  • Get familiar with Android Studio. For example, check out the new memory or CPU profiler – an improvement over the DDMS feature in Eclipse
  • Get to know the new build system gradle and say goodbye to ant. You can start using the gradle plugin in Eclipse as a first step of the migration.
  • Have a look at the new parameter applicationID instead of package name
  • The format of Android libraries changes from a Java Archive (.jar) to an Android Archive Library (.aar), this has many advantages especially if you plan to distribute your application using the Google Play Store.

The last point from the list above of course also affects us at Wikitude. Internally we have already made the switch and are purely using Android Studio for any Android application development. For the Wikitude SDK will be do this switch starting with SDK 5, where we are fully embracing Android Studio. The Android library will be shipped as an Android Archive Library (.aar file). Sample projects for Android will be based on Android Studio.
Releasing the SDK by end of July will give you enough time to switch your own projects to Android Studio in time and don’t have to worry that the Wikitude SDK would not work.

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