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Android development

Kotlin and gradle versions

Compatibility tables:

Gradle version is defined in distributionUrl parameter in android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties.

Related packages that must be compatible with each other and updated together:

Dependency Location
org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin android/build.gradle
com.android.tools.build:gradle android/build.gradle
com.android.application android/settings.gradle
org.jetbrains.kotlin.android android/settings.gradle
kotlinCompilerExtensionVersion android/app/build.gradle
org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib android/app/build.gradle
androidx.*-ktx android/app/build.gradle

Setup emulator on Windows

Here is how you can setup Android emulator using Android Studio:

  • Open Android studio and navigate to AVD Manager (Tools/AVD Manager)

  • You can use AVD Manager to examine all your Android emulators.

  • Click the + Create Virtual Device... button to add a new Android emulator.

    • Select the desired device definition and click Next.
    • Select the desired system image and click Next.
    • Select the desired AVD device name and click Finish.

  • Go to your IDE (in our example we will use Visual Studio Code) and click Select device to use (usually in the bottom right corner of Visual Studio Code). Select the new Android emulator device from the list that opens and check that it boots and works without errors.

  • Click Run/Start Debugging in the IDE while the Android emulator device is active to verify that the application opens and runs correctly on the new AVD.

Running the app on Android phone using VS Code

  • Connect your phone to your PC

  • Enable developer mode on your phone

  • Enable USB debugging mode

  • In VS-code: Run: RUN > Start Debugging or press F5

  • Select your phone from the list

Capture device logs

This script is a wrapper for adb logcat:

python3 ./script/android_logcat.py

It filters out irrelevant logs and adds nice formatting and colorization (each log tag is assigned its own color).

Unlike flutter run, you can launch it before the app when you need logs from the very early stages of initialization. It also displays some additional logs and hides some unnecessary ones.