Distinguishing development mode and release mode e

Question

I'm building an Android application and would like to maintain a few environment variables that I can tweak depending on whether I'm in development mode or release mode. For example, I need to invoke a web service and the URL will be slightly different in either mode. I'd like to externalize this and other settings so I can change them easily based on my target deployment.

Are there any best practices or anything in the SDK to assist with this need?

Answer 1

Android build.gradle has Handles Debug and Release Environment well.

Append the following code snippet in build.gradle file

buildTypes {
    debug {
        buildConfigField "Boolean", "IS_DEBUG_MODE", 'true'
    }

    release {
        buildConfigField "Boolean", "IS_DEBUG_MODE", 'false'
    }
}

Now you can access the variable like below

    if (BuildConfig.IS_DEBUG_MODE) { {
        //Debug mode.
    } else {
        //Release mode
    }

Answer 2

I came across another approach today by accident that seems really straight forward.. Look at Build.TAGS, when the app is created for development this evaluates to the String "test-keys".

Doesn't get much easier than a string compare.

Also Build.MODEL and Build.PRODUCT evaluate to the String "google_sdk" on the emulator!

Answer 3

I would check out isDebuggerConnected

Answer 4

According to this stackoverflow post, in SDK Tools version 17 (we're on 19 as of this writing) adds a BuildConfig.DEBUG constant that is true when building a dev build.

Answer 5

@viktor-bresan Thanks for a useful solution. It'd be more helpful if you just included a general way to retrieve the current application's context to make it a fully working example. Something along the lines of the below:

PackageInfo packageInfo = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(), 0);

Answer 6

How about something like the code below ...

public void onCreate Bundle b ) {
   super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
   if ( signedWithDebugKey(this,this.getClass()) ) {
     blah blah blah
   }

  blah 
    blah 
      blah

}

static final String DEBUGKEY = 
      "get the debug key from logcat after calling the function below once from the emulator";    


public static boolean signedWithDebugKey(Context context, Class<?> cls) 
{
    boolean result = false;
    try {
        ComponentName comp = new ComponentName(context, cls);
        PackageInfo pinfo = context.getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(comp.getPackageName(),PackageManager.GET_SIGNATURES);
        Signature sigs[] = pinfo.signatures;
        for ( int i = 0; i < sigs.length;i++)
        Log.d(TAG,sigs[i].toCharsString());
        if (DEBUGKEY.equals(sigs[0].toCharsString())) {
            result = true;
            Log.d(TAG,"package has been signed with the debug key");
        } else {
            Log.d(TAG,"package signed with a key other than the debug key");
        }

    } catch (android.content.pm.PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
        return false;
    }

    return result;

}