Anhedonic Android#

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:39:36 +0000

I'm having another go at Android development: this happens every so often when the memories of Java verbosity are sufficiently dulled by distance that I start thinking "it can't have been that bad, can it?". And of course, it turns out every time that yes, it can.

Anyway, should you be doing Android programming and getting a runtime error of the form Your content must have a TabHost whose id attribute is 'android.R.id.tabhost' when your latest changes shouldn't have involved a tabhost anyway, my advice is not to spend too long looking for the cause until after you have run ant clean and reinstalled on the target device or emulator. Because my experience is that the error then usually goes away with no code changes required.

Another tip to lessen the monkey-clicking: use the am command to launch your app automatically after a successful build/install. I don't know ant nor do I want to learn it right now (include XML rant by reference here) so I've added to the creaking edifice witha small Makefile

PATH:=/usr/local/lib/android/tools:$(PATH)
bin/onelouder-debug.apk: $(shell find src -name \*.java)  $(shell find res -name \*.xml )
	ant debug
go: bin/onelouder-debug.apk
	adb -e install -r  bin/onelouder-debug.apk
	adb -e shell "am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n fm.onelouder.player/.Onelouder"
clean:
	rm -rf bin gen
	ant clean