Note: This post is part of a series on D8 and R8, Android's new dexer and optimizer, respectively. For an intro to D8 read "Android's Java 8 support". For an intro to R8 read "R8 Optimization: Staticization". Part 1 of this post demonstrated R8's ability to eliminate null checks after method inlinin...

Kotlin 1.3's experimental inline class feature allows creating type-safe, semantic wrappers around values which are erased at runtime. Database IDs are a perfect use case for this functionality. Combined with SQLDelight which automatically generates model objects and APIs for querying, different tab...

Note: This post is part of a series on D8 and R8, Android's new dexer and optimizer, respectively. For an intro to D8 read "Android's Java 8 support". For an intro to R8 read "R8 Optimization: Staticization". The last post in this series was the first to cover R8 and one of its optimizations. This p...

Note: This post is part of a series on D8 and R8, Android's new dexer and optimizer, respectively. For an intro to D8 read "Android's Java 8 support". This post introduces R8. The first three posts (1, 2, 3) in this series explored D8. Among its core responsibility of converting Java bytecode to Dal...

Note: This post is part of a series on D8 and R8, Android's new dexer and optimizer, respectively. For an intro to D8 read "Android's Java 8 support". The first two posts (1, 2) in this series explored how D8 is responsible for desugaring new Java language features to work on all versions of Android...

Note: This post is part of a series on D8 and R8, Android's new dexer and optimizer, respectively. For an intro to D8 read "Android's Java 8 support". The first post in this series explored Android's Java 8 support. Having support for the language features and APIs of Java 8 is table stakes at this ...

I've worked from home for a few years, and during that time I've heard people around the office complaining about Android's varying support for different versions of Java. Every year at Google I/O you could find me asking about it at the fireside chats or directly to the folks responsible. At confer...

The aapt2 tool packages your Android application resources into the format used at runtime. It also generates "keep" rules for ProGuard or R8 so that the types referenced inside of your resources do not get removed. Views referenced only in layout XML, action providers referenced only in menu XML, a...

Gradle provides two built-in mechanisms for tracing your build: --profile and --scan. The former produces a simple HTML report of task execution times. You can get a rough idea of where time was spent but are unlikely to glean any real insights. The latter sends a detailed report to Gradle's servers...

This post was published externally on Android Developers Blog. Read it at https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/02/introducing-android-ktx-even-sweeter.html.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/surfacing-hidden-change-to-pull-requests.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/generating-kotlin-code-with-kotlinpoet/.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/an-optionals-place-in-kotlin.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/square-open-source-loves-kotlin.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/web-sockets-now-shipping-in-okhttp-3-5.

Okio's BufferedSink is a high-level abstraction for writing binary and character data as bytes. Its design stems from frustrations with the JDK's java.io.* and java.nio.* libraries. At Droidcon Montreal last year I gave a presentation comparing it with the former, but also showcased Okio's concept o...

Every day new Java code is written for Android apps and libraries which is plagued with an infectious disease: Hungarian notation. The proliferation of Hungarian notation on Android is an accident and its continued justification erroneous. Let's dispel its common means of advocacy: "The Android Java...

Major version updates to libraries solve the API warts of old and bring shiny new APIs to address previous shortcomings—often in a breaking fashion. Updating an Android or Java app is usually a day or two affair before you reap the benefits. Problems arise, however, when other libraries you depend o...

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/sqlbrite-a-reactive-database-foundation.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/better-parameterized-tests-with-burst.

Speaking at conferences is an investment of speakers in time, energy, and knowledge. The quality of a presentation and of the conference itself can be measured in the amount of investment made. Here are my tips for future conference speakers. Choosing A Conference At which conference you choose to s...

Features feel how I imagine children would. They are relatively easy to spawn but require a lengthy committment and constant care. Picasso's API would be nothing short of a Greek tragedy if we humored every feature request that we received. Finding the right balance of what is appropriate to add and...

Guava is a monolithic library, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Nobody thinks twice when bundling it for the JVM. In the world of Android the mention of Guava has a bit of a negative stigma due to the dex file format's method limit and a concern about bloating APK size. The latter is no longe...

Two years ago I wrote a blog post complaining that the Android build system was broken. At the time, Eclipse ADT and Ant were the blessed solutions and they just hadn't scaled with the platform. Third-party solutions existed for both tooling and IDE but they always felt a bit illegitimate and at ris...

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/hello-picasso-2-3.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/dynamic-images-with-thumbor.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/enhance-your-application-using-picasso.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/easy-http-requests-with-retrofit.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/mimecraft-javawriter-and-protoparser.

This post was published externally on Square Corner. Read it at https://developer.squareup.com/blog/seven-days-of-open-source.