Android

The Android operating system

Android is an operating system based on the Linux kernel. The project responsible for developing the Android system is called the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and is primarily lead by Google.

The Android system supports background processing, provides a rich user interface library, supports 2-D and 3-D graphics using the OpenGL-ES (short OpenGL) standard and grants access to the file system as well as an embedded SQLite database.

An Android application typically consists of different visual and non visual components and can reuse components of other applications.

Task

In Android the reuse of other application components is a concept known as task. An application can access other Android components to achieve a task. For example, from a component of your application you can trigger another component in the Android system, which manages photos, even if this component is not part of your application. In this component you select a photo and return to your application to use the selected photo.

Such a flow of events is depicted in the following graphic.

 Flow of events depicted in Android

Android platform components

The Android system is a full software stack, which is typically divided into the four areas as depicted in the following graphic.

 Description of Android Development Layer

The levels can be described as:

l Applications - The Android Open Source Project contains several default application, like the Browser, Camera, Gallery, Music, Phone and more.

l Application framework - An API which allows high-level interactions with the Android system from Android applications.

l Libraries and runtime - The libraries for many common functions (e.g.: graphic rendering, data storage, web browsing, etc.) of the Application Framework and the Dalvik runtime, as well as the core Java libraries for running Android applications.

l Linux kernel - Communication layer for the underlying hardware.

The Linux kernel, the libraries and the runtime are encapsulated by the application framework. The Android application developer typically works with the two layers on top to create new Android applications.

Google Play

Google offers the Google Play service, a marketplace in which programmers can offer their Android applications to Android users. Customers use the Google Play application which allows them to buy and install applications from the Google Play service.

Google Play also offers an update service. If a programmer uploads a new version of his application to Google Play, this service notifies existing users that an update is available and allows them to install the update.

Google Play provides access to services and libraries for Android application programmers, too. For example, it provides a service to use and display Google Maps and another to synchronize the application state between different Android installations. Providing these services via Google Play has the advantage that they are available for older Android releases and can be updated by Google without the need for an update of the Android release on the phone.

Android Development Tools

Android SDK

The Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) contains the necessary tools to create, compile and package Android applications. Most of these tools are command line based. The primary way to develop Android applications is based on the Java programming language.

 Android debug bridge (adb)

The Android SDK contains the Android debug bridge (adb), which is a tool that allows you to connect to a virtual or real Android device, for the purpose of managing the device or debugging your application.

Gradle and the Android plug-in for Gradle

The Android tooling uses Gradle as build system. The Android team provides a Gradle plug-in for build Android applications which is entered in the build.gradle file in the top root of the Android project. It typically looks like the following, please note that the version might be different in your case.

Android Developer Tools and Android Studio

Google provides an IDE called Android Studio as the preferred development environment for creating Android applications. This IDE is based on the IntelliJ IDE.

The Android tools provide specialized editors for Android specific files. Most of Android's configuration files are based on XML. In this case these editors allow you to switch between the XML representation of the file and a structured user interface for entering the data.

This description uses Android Studio as IDE.

Android RunTime (ART)

Android 5.0 uses the Android RunTime (ART) as runtime for all Android applications.

ART uses Ahead Of Time compilation. During the deployment process of an application on an Android device, the application code is translated into machine code. This results in approx. 30% larger compile code, but allows faster execution from the beginning of the application.

This also saves battery life, as the compilation is only done once, during the first start of the application.

The dex2oat tool takes the .dex file created by the Android tool change and compiles that into an Executable and Linkable Format (ELF file). This file contains the dex code, compiled native code and meta-data. Keeping the .dex code allows that existing tools still work.

The garbage collection in ART has been optimized to reduce times in which the application freezes.

How to develop Android applications

Android applications are primarily written in the Java programming language.

During development the developer creates the Android specific configuration files and writes the application logic in the Java programming language.

The Android tooling converts these application files, transparently to the user, into an Android application. When developers trigger the deployment in their IDE, the whole Android application is compiled, packaged, deployed and started.

Conversion process from source code to Android application

The Java source files are converted to Java class files by the Java compiler.

The Android SDK contains a tool called dx which converts Java class files into a .dex (Dalvik Executable) file. All class files of the application are placed in this .dex file. During this conversion process redundant information in the class files are optimized in the .dex file.

For example, if the same String is found in different class files, the .dex file contains only one reference of this String.

These .dex files are therefore much smaller in size than the corresponding class files.

The .dex file and the resources of an Android project, e.g., the images and XML files, are packed into an .apk (Android Package) file. The program aapt (Android Asset Packaging Tool) performs this step.

The resulting .apk file contains all necessary data to run the Android application and can be deployed to an Android device via the adb tool.