Beating Android FragmentationJuan Gomez
Agenda
• Intro
• Types of fragmentation
• Tools
• Best practices
• Review
• Q&A
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Intro
Who am I?
• Mobile Engineer at Eventbrite
• Previously at OneLouder Apps
• Android & Python Developer
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Over 2 million events150 million tickets sold
$2 billion in gross ticket salesEvents in 179 countries
Eventbrite by the Numbers
ANDROID FRAGMENTATION
Is it really that bad?
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Android Fragmentation Visualized (http://bit.ly/1fvOXF0)!7
Types of fragmentation
• OS Fragmentation
• OEM Fragmentation
• Hardware Fragmentation
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OS Fragmentation
Mainly refers to the different versions of Android being used at the same time
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OS Fragmentation
• Android Forks
• Other OSes with Android app support
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OEM fragmentation
• Skins
• TouchWiz (Samsung)
• Sense (HTC)
• MotoBlur (Motorola)
• OEM OS modifications.
• Changes to AOSP even on certain API calls.
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HW Fragmentation
• All the different types of Hardware features (keyboard, camera, screen, HW buttons, etc).
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HW Fragmentation
• Android is designed to manage HW fragmentation
• The pain points in this area are on low level things like different chipsets, GPUs, CPU cores, etc.
• Android x86 is the extreme example of this.
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TOOLS
The Basics
• Set minSdkVersion to the lowest API Level you want to support.
• Set targetSdkVersion to the current highest API Level.
• Use Android Lint to find code that is not supported by your minimum API Level (and other possible problems).
• Use fragments when possible.
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The Basics
• Encapsulate your version checking logic
• Don’t fill your code with this:
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.#####)
• Use the Support Libraries
• Follow the Android Design Guidelines
• http://bit.ly/1hMUNmX
• Beware of Google Play Services!
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Support Libraries
• Support Library v4 • Fragments • Rich Notifications, View Pager, Navigation Drawer,
Accessibility, Loaders. • Support Library v7
• ActionBarCompat • Grid Layout, Media Router
• Support Library v8 • Renderscript for API Level < 14
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3rd-party libraries• ActionBarSherlock
• NineOldAndroids
• Android Asset Studio
• http://bit.ly/Lo6Xb5
• Square libraries:
• OkHttp, Picasso, Wire, Retrofit
• CommonsWare libraries
• http://bit.ly/1d7NQs0!18
HTTP Stack
• Avoid using Apache HTTPClient
• Only use if you’re still supporting API Level < 10
• You should be using URLConnection and its descendants.
• Better yet use OkHttp from Square (fork of HttpURLConnection).
• You could also use Volley from Google
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Migrate to Gradle
• Gradle is a powerful tool that can help manage complicated compatibility scenarios.
• Use “flavors” and “buildTypes” to create different APKs for different OSes, chipsets, etc (Kindle, Nook, Tegra, x86, Blackberry, even 2.x and 4.x versions).
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BEST PRACTICES
API Levels Recommendations
• Older projects should be supporting API Level ≥ 8
• Recommended would be API Level ≥ 10
• If you’re already using ActionBarSherlock, no need to migrate to ActionBarCompat.
• New projects should start with minSdkVersion=”14”
• If you absolutely have to support API Level ≥ 8 then use ActionBarCompat.
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minSdkVersion=”14”
• This is a new “movement” within the Android community that advocates dropping support for older versions of Android (mainly 2.x) !
• Started by Jeff Gilfelt at Google I/O last year
• Advocated by Reto Meier from Google during I/O and other events.
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Lots of Testing
• Hopefully automated!
• Test on actual devices
• Use tools like JUnit, Espresso, Monkey, Roboelectric, Robotium, etc.
• Leverage something like Spoon (from Square) to run your tests on multiple devices.
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Leverage analytics
• Measure everything
• Make decisions based on your data
• Analytics suites:
• Flurry
• MixPanel
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Crash reporting
• Get a tool to monitor crashes
• Lots of options, including:
• Crashlytics (Free)
• Crittercism
• HockeyApp
• Some analytics suites provide this as well (like Flurry)
• Worst case, use Google Play Dev Console
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Tools from Google
• Multiple APK support.
• Alpha and Beta groups
• Combined with Analytics + Crash reporting
• Beta users can’t post reviews
• Staged rollouts.
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Summary• Android fragmentation is massively over hyped! • Be aware of the different types of fragmentation • Use libraries to homogenize feature support. • Start planning on dropping 2.x support (Old projects) • minSdkVersion=”14” on all new projects • Leverage Gradle to create multiple versions if needed. • Do lots of tests (Hopefully automated and on devices) • Use Analytics + Crash reporting • Create a Beta community and use staged rollouts.
• Rinse and repeat 😜!28
Eventbrite Tech Talk: Android Development + Design
February 18, 2014 @ 6:30 PM
http://bit.ly/1e7oIrl
We’re hiring!
If you’re interested, let’s talk after the session
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