The build system contains alpha support for generating Android Eclipse project files to aid with development.
To generate Android Eclipse project files, you'll need to have a fully built and packaged tree:
mach build && mach package
(This is because Eclipse itself packages an APK containing
omni.ja, and omni.ja is only assembled during packaging.)
Then, simply generate the Android Eclipse build backend:
mach build-backend -b AndroidEclipse
If all goes well, the path to the generated projects should be
printed (currently, $OBJDIR/android_eclipse).
To use the generated Android Eclipse project files, you'll need to have a recent version of Eclipse (see Tested Versions) with the Eclipse ADT plugin installed. You can then import all the projects into Eclipse using File > Import ... > General > Existing Projects into Workspace.
As you pull and update the source tree, your Android Eclipse files may fall out of sync with the build configuration. The tree should still build fine from within Eclipse, but source files may be missing and in rare circumstances Eclipse's index may not have the proper build configuration.
To account for this, you'll want to periodically regenerate the
Android Eclipse project files. You can do this by running mach build
&& mach package && mach build-backend -b AndroidEclipse from the
command line. It's a good idea to refresh and clean build all projects
in Eclipse after doing this.
In future, we'd like to include an Android Eclipse run configuration or build target that integrates updating the project files.
Currently, regeneration rewrites the original project files. If you've made any customizations to the projects, they will likely get overwritten. We would like to improve this user experience in the future.
If Eclipse's builder gets confused, you should always refresh and
clean build all projects. If Eclipse's builder is continually
confused, you can see a log of what is happening at
$OBJDIR/android_eclipse/build.log.
If you run into memory problems executing dex, you should
Increase Eclipse's memory limits.
The produced Android Eclipse project files are unfortunately not portable. Please don't move them around.
The Android Eclipse backend generates several projects spanning Fennec itself and its tests. You'll mostly interact with the Fennec project itself.
In future, we'd like to expand this documentation to include some of
the technical details of how the Eclipse integration works, and how to
add additional Android Eclipse projects using the moz.build
system.
| OS | Version | Working as of |
|---|---|---|
| Mac OS X | Luna (Build id: 20130919-0819) | February 2014 |
| Mac OS X | Kepler (Build id: 20131219-0014) | February 2014 |
| Mac OS X 10.8.5 | Kepler (Build id: 20130919-0819) | February 2014 |