Monthly Archives: September 2012

First Meet With Dhimitri

Jon, Dhimitri and I had a meeting today to catch Dhimitri up on what we have been doing and the plan for the next few months. We met in the library and discussed how to set up Action Bar Sherlock and demo’d the app again. We plan on following the style guide very thoroughly so the app will flow how normal Android apps work. We also talked about trying the app done to a point where we could start field testing the app with students around campus and get a feel for what works and what will need improvement.

Everything seemed to go pretty well, I’ll be working on editing a task that has been previously made using ‘add task’ and I think I may just have the edit copy the old task and replace the new data instead of just updating, not too sure yet.

We talked about doing SQLite a little bit but the point still stands about leaving it out until later (if we want/need it).

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Working on a facelift

Howdy all,

Jon and I aren’t graphic designers, actually I just ran into this problem at work, and it’s pretty obvious this app isn’t going to be the prettiest bell at the ball. Whatever, form follows function. Right now I’m working on making the ‘create activity’ section contain everything we’re going to need Calendar style date picker, notes, title, priority radio buttons and that should be it for now.

I’ve ran into a bit of a problem with saving the tasks and I can’t figure out why they aren’t being recreated on restart for now I’m just leaving it alone (which is why nothing has been committed yet). Since Jon built most of the onRestart() I’m sure he’ll know what’s wrong once we meet THIS SUNDAY FOR SURE so I’m not too concerned. I found out today that the GUI for android dev is terrific, it really is. I was fussing around with all the ugly xml and switched over only to see the GUI version was so smooth and easy to use.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Catching Up on GIT

Howdy all,

Luckily Jon and I have been working internships all summer using some sort of variation of a Version Control System. I guess I didn’t learn as much as I thought in 401 for GIT as I really needed. My git-foo has improved significantly (Jon’s is still way above mine, though. ) Right now I’m working on my james-dev branch (at least the one I push to) and usually branch when I’m trying something new. I’m really digging the issue tracker but, I think one day this week I am going to take some time out, probably with Jon, and really get our Wiki in gear.

In other news, old news that I never mentioned, Joe was MIA for a while and I finally got in contact with him and he said he was too busy and couldn’t commit I emailed Karl about it but I never got a response, I’m sure he’s just enjoying summer.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Whoops.

(This blog post is a few weeks old and never was posted), I’ve been pecking away at the app, though. Jon built a great foundation for our app and it’s time to get cracking and finish this bad boy. Right now I’m playing catchup on all the documentation for Android (big thanks to Jon for meeting and walking me through). TheNewBoston started to get too slow and I started using google development docs, big difference and ultimately better.

Finals are coming up for my summer class and then I can focus on this app.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting up your development environment

This is a guide for creating a new Android Eclipse project from source code on GitHub. It is tailored to my independent study project for the benefit of my partners, but it could be easily adapted to any Android project.

Note: This guide was created for Windows 7 64-bit. Other versions of Windows should be similar.

1. Download and install Java SE Development Kit for Windows x86

Note: I highly recommend NOT installing to the default C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\ folder. The Program Files folder has very restrictive permissions which may cause file writing/copying errors in the future. I chose to install to C:\Java\.

2. Download and install Android SDK for Windows

Note: Again I recommend NOT installing to the default folder. I chose to install to C:\Android\.

3. Run the Android SDK Manager and install the groups: Tools, Android 4.1 (API 16), and Android 2.2 (API 8).

4. Download either Eclipse Classic for Windows 32-bit or Eclipse for Java Developers for Windows 32-bit

5. Extract the downloaded eclipse\ folder into your Java\jdk*\ folder

6. Download and install GitHub for Windows

7. Run Eclipse, and choose your GitHub folder as your workspace

8. Install Eclipse ADT Plugin

Note: If you get an error after restarting Eclipse about not being able to find the Android SDK, just click the Preferences button and point to your Android\android-sdk\ folder.

9. Create a new Android project, and then close Eclipse afterwards

Name the project Task Butler, and name the package edu.worcester.cs499summer2012. The target SDK should be API 16 and the minimum required SDK should be API 8.

10. Clone the CS499Summer2012 repo to your local GitHub folder

11. Move the local repo files into your Task Butler folder

In your GitHub\Task Butler\ folder, delete everything EXCEPT .settings\, .project, and .classpath
Move everything from GitHub\CS499Summer2012\ into GitHub\Task Butler\
Note: Make sure “Show hidden files, folders, and drives” is enabled in Windows Explorer’s Folder options so you can see the hidden .git folder
Delete the now-empty \GitHub\CS499Summer2012\ folder

12. Reopen Eclipse, and the project should now have all of its files (and lots of errors!)