October 12, 2022

Android Studio Flamingo

I am running Fedora linux (Fedora 38) on my Intel based desktop. Back in October of 2022, I installed Android Studio Dolphin (2021.3.1), (Prior to that I had Bumblebee). Now I see that "Flamingo" is the latest mainstream release (2022.2.1). Note the link above to "update methods". I just downloaded the whole shebang and replaced the old version lock stock and barrel, but there are ways to update from within the studio that may be better as I start using and perhaps customizing it. I use the download link to download the install file (1.0 G in size). This gives me the following file (1079632896 bytes): 
android-studio-2022.2.1.20-linux.tar.gz
I move the previous android studio out of the way and put this in its place as follows: 
cd /u1
mv /home/tom/android-studio-2022.2.1.20-linux.tar.gz .
mv android-studio android-studio-2021
tar xzvf android-studio-2022.2.1.20-linux.tar.gz
I can launch it to do a basic checkout via: 
cd /u1/android-studio/bin
./studio.sh
This indeed works, and finds the "Greeting Card" demo I had been fiddling with using the previous version. It warns that it cannot find the JavaSDK it might like and tells me that the "Gradle JVM setting was changed to use "Embedded JDK". This is something I don't understand and should dig into at some point.

It starts up fast, not the slow misery of ADT and Eclipse.

Another part of the window tells me that it recommends upgrading the Gradle Plugin from 7.3.0 to 7.4.2. The "Upgrade Assistant" seems to know what to do and I can just agree to let it perform the recommended steps. I get a spinning progress indicator saying "Running Sync" and there is lots of action on the bottom status line. It upgrades "Gradle" to version 7.5 and the AGP dependency from 7.3.0 to 7.4.2

Gradle is some general purpose open source build automation tool. Presumably I won't need to know any details about it and android studio will just use it under the hood.

I restart it and now it wants to upgrade Gradle from 7 to 8.0.2, so away we go. After this, I launch it again and it seems content.

Back in 2021 when I installed the previous version of android studio I also made sure to install various 32 bit libraries that were recommended. As per the install notes I do the following to doublecheck: 

su
dnf install zlib.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 bzip2-libs.i686
Last metadata expiration check: 1:25:38 ago on Thu 08 Jun 2023 02:51:32 PM MST.
Package zlib-1.2.13-3.fc38.i686 is already installed.
Package ncurses-libs-6.4-3.20230114.fc38.i686 is already installed.
Package bzip2-libs-1.0.8-13.fc38.i686 is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!

I have a script "studio" in /home/tom/bin that simply does this: 

/u1/android-studio/bin/studio.sh

I simply type "studio" to launch android studio.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org