Run Android tests in a connected device

Not quite sure as to why it never occurred to me, but it is totally possible and legal to run unit tests inside a real device, connected to your dev box via a USB cable.


An obvious advantage is that you are now running your tests in a more "realistic" environment; there are no drawbacks that I can think of (unless your device has some weird 'lockdown' imposed by the manufacturer / cell provider); and... that's when you realize just how much faster than an emulator that is.


So here's the day's top-tip: if you are in a hurry, and have a lot of unit test you want to run, get that USB cable out!

Latest update for Android SDK breaks for Ubuntu Karmic

If you have recently updated your Android SDK to R08 (Gingerbread, 2.3) on Linux and are using Ubuntu Karmic, chances are that you will not be able to run the emulator: It will simply die with the following error:


$ ./emulator
./emulator: /lib32/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found (required by ./emulator)


This is caused by an incompatibility with Karmic's installed GLIBC - the new SDK/Emulator works just fine on Lucid.


The Android team is working on a fix - in the meantime, a workaround is to download the _r07 of the tools from here, and replace emulator in the tools/ folder under the android_sdk installation folder.


A bit hacky, but works.