Android

2 minute read

While Android supports most Java language features, it doesn’t support every API that Java provides. On the other hand, Kotlin multiplatform only allows sharing code across all targets (commonMain), not a subset of targets (commonJvm).

4 minute read

This week JFrog - out of nowhere - announced to completely remove their Maven repository. Since they’ll pull it offline already by May 2021 (!!!) it’s time to urgently migrate away. This blogpost will guide how to get started.

2 minute read

Short, powerful post on how to test the release version of libraries directly within a project without having to deploy them to Maven first.

9 minute read

Ever had a build failure while integrating an SDK? Wonder how you can avoid your SDK customers having dependency conflicts? How many transitive dependencies should your SDK have?

5 minute read

With modularization being all the hype, should you also modularize an SDK? Are fat aar files really needed? And how do you prevent internal APIs from being exposed on your public interface?

4 minute read

Having switched to Android SDK development over the past year, I’ve run into quite a few interesting and unexpected challenges. So how does library development differ from app development?

12 minute read

Now that we know how feature flags can help us release faster, it’s time to dive into the actual implementation details. How can we easily define feature flags? How to configure them both locally as remotely? And use them in...

5 minute read

Empowered with what feature flags are and why they are useful, let’s see how we can actually integrate them into an app. And how can we roll them out to our users?

6 minute read

A key ingredient to speed up modern software development is feature flags. But what is a feature flag precisely? Why should you care about them? How do you integrate them into your codebase? And how can we make them easy...

3 minute read

Your icon is one of the most important assets in your app. With a bit of luck, users might even put it on their main launcher screen!

5 minute read

Now that we’ve established that modularization is a really good thing to strive for, how should a modularized app look like? How are the different modules connected? And how does this look for a real app?

2 minute read

Was really great visiting Kotlinconf this year and I wanted to do a quick post to link to all of it’s wonderful content.

2 minute read

This is a post-mortem where the very dangerous permission, READ_PHONE_STATE, unintentionally sneaked into our app. Here’s how this could happen, how we debugged and finally how we solved it.

3 minute read

Do Fragment transactions and back navigation have no more secrets for you? Well then you should try to solve the mystery in this post, where a Fragment (literally) came to haunt us…

3 minute read

While you may be tempted to strive for 100% code coverage, that would be a horrible idea. Besides some code being hard to test, the concept of coverage is actually fundamentally limited.

2 minute read

Had a blast visiting Droidcon UK this year and wanted to do a quick post to link to all of it’s wonderful content.

3 minute read

This isn’t another post about the benefits of using Kotlin. Hell, I’m not even going to cover any of its language features. Nor will I try to convince you to make the switch.

4 minute read

For years Android developers have been limited to Java 6 features. While RetroLambda or the experimental Jack toolchain would help, proper support from Google was notably missing.

3 minute read

Upgrading to Android studio 3.0 territory will make building multi-module projects a lot faster, but it also means a breaking Gradle plugin API change unfortunately.

3 minute read

Being my 2nd year at Google IO, I decided to do things differently: Besides taking notes during sessions, I also created a personal todo list. This contains all new (and even old) technologies I got triggered to look into.

3 minute read

After organizing Droidcon Paris for several year, the organizers decided to move on and experiment with a new format. This didn’t just result in a well organized conference, but also in a fresh new vibe whilst still feeling familiar.

3 minute read

Too many times I’ve seen developers trying to avoid crashes at all cost. But are unhandled exceptions really that bad? And are null checks really the answer?

3 minute read

If you can code, you can also write unit tests. Writing awesome tests on the other hand is a different story. Don’t fool yourself: Unit testing code is production code that you will need to maintain, refactor and build upon...

1 minute read

The Mockito team is on fire lately! Not only did they add support to mock final classes and methods, but now they allow running Mockito directly onto an actual Android device.

2 minute read

Due to its clean simple api, Mockito has become world’s most popular Java mocking framework. After having covered all of its basics, it’s time to spice things up and start extending Mockito.

1 minute read

Code coverage is an awesome way to motivate you and your team to write more tests. But did you know that simply enabling it slows down your build significantly?

4 minute read

As die hard Android developers, copyright notices are usually not on top of our priority list. Yet large corporations always insist to add a copyright header. Why do they do that? Should you do that for your open source libraries?...

1 minute read

At Droidcon Berlin 2016 I had a great time talking about testing using the Mockito framework. While the talk wasn’t recorded unfortunately, the great folks at Voice Republic recorded an audio version which you can listen to as a podcast...

3 minute read

Having founded the entire Droidcon franchise in 2009, Droidcon Berlin is a magical conference to be at. Not only do they have an awesome lineup of speakers (including yours truly). But they also organize great after hour events. Further they’re...

6 minute read

As green field projects are a rare breed, chances are that you’ve inherited a legacy code base. If you’re as lucky as me, that code base has over 65k methods causing the build times to be boringly slow.

4 minute read

A conference about our favorite Green little robots? In sunny Italy? With great food and a party? Yeah, I can image how you must feel in case you missed it… I on the other hand was fortunate enough to attend...

5 minute read

Do you remember the last time you had to dig into strings.xml to find the right String to use? Or that you manually had to go over all drawables to find the one you needed?

4 minute read

As my previous blogposts already covered how to set up a private Maven repository, you might wonder “Why again a Maven blogpost?”. Well that’s a fair question and the answer is twofold:

8 minute read

Wouldn’t you love to have your open source projects built automatically by a continuous integration server? And to have a detailed code coverage report for all your unit tests? Even when someone generated a pull request? And how about having...

7 minute read

My previous blog post described how to set up your own private Maven repository with Artifactory in 30 minutes. This second and final part will make things more interesting and take your setup to the next level.

5 minute read

Setting up your own Maven repository and uploading artifacts to it is quite a daunting task. As I went through this experience myself recently, I want to help others in setting up their own Maven repository via Artifactory and automate...