Android Studio 2.0 beta speeds up app restarts
When Google made the preview available around Thanksgiving, it emphasized workflows and emulation. The beta of version 2.0 updates Android Emulator, the App Indexing & Integration Testing feature, and Instant Run, a workflow capability enabling a faster code editing and application deployment cycle. Android Studio is Google's official IDE for building Android mobile apps.
"The beta release is near stable release quality, and should be relatively bug free," Google's Jamal Eason, Android product manager, said in a blog post. "But as with any beta release, bugs may still exist, so if you do find an issue, let us know so we can work to fix it."
The Instant Run feature introduces the Cold Swap capability to Android Studio. Because Instant Run enables code changes while an app is running on a device or the Android Emulator, Eason noted that Cold Swap "will quickly restart the whole application." This is done typically for structural code change, including changes to the class hierarchy, method signatures, static initializers, or fields, he said. "Cold Swap is available when you deploy to targets with API level 21 or above."
App Indexing & Integration now features the ability to validate results of URLs via a validation tool, and the Android Debug Bridge command-line tool for communicating with an emulator or a device installs and pushes files five times faster. The beta release also includes a GPU Profiler for graphics-intensive applications.