Beating Android FragmentationJuan Gomez

Agenda

• Intro

• Types of fragmentation

• Tools

• Best practices

• Review

• Q&A

!2

Intro

Who am I?

• Mobile Engineer at Eventbrite

• Previously at OneLouder Apps

• Android & Python Developer

!3

Over 2 million events150 million tickets sold

$2 billion in gross ticket salesEvents in 179 countries

Eventbrite by the Numbers

Intro

Slides:

• http://lanyrd.com/profile/juandg/

!5

ANDROID FRAGMENTATION

Is it really that bad?

!

!

!

!

!

!

Android Fragmentation Visualized (http://bit.ly/1fvOXF0)!7

Types of fragmentation

• OS Fragmentation

• OEM Fragmentation

• Hardware Fragmentation

!8

OS Fragmentation

Mainly refers to the different versions of Android being used at the same time

!9

OS Fragmentation

• Android Forks

• Other OSes with Android app support

!10

OEM fragmentation

• Skins

• TouchWiz (Samsung)

• Sense (HTC)

• MotoBlur (Motorola)

• OEM OS modifications.

• Changes to AOSP even on certain API calls.

!11

HW Fragmentation

• All the different types of Hardware features (keyboard, camera, screen, HW buttons, etc).

!12

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.

!13

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.

!15

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!

!16

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

!17

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

!19

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).

!20

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.

!22

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.

!23

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.

!24

Leverage analytics

• Measure everything

• Make decisions based on your data

• Analytics suites:

• Flurry

• MixPanel

!25

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

!26

Tools from Google

• Multiple APK support.

• Alpha and Beta groups

• Combined with Analytics + Crash reporting

• Beta users can’t post reviews

• Staged rollouts.

!27

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

eventbrite.com/jobs

Questions?

Download our apps:

eventbrite.com/eventbriteapp

Thank You!@_juandg

jgomez@eventbrite.com