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02162: Course on Software Engineering 2 (e15)

Using Subversive from Android Studio

 

Using subversive from Android Studio is different from using it from Eclipse. In particular, Android Studio does not automatically ignore binary files, local files and all the structures that are automatically generated by gradle. Therefore, a bit more care needs to be taken when sharing a Android Studio project to an SVN repository.

 

The following instructions and guidelines will help you to properly share your Android Studio projects via SVN and, in particular, not to check in files to SVN, which should not be there.

 

Here is a list of folders and files from your Android Studio projects that should NOT be shared:

  • build/
  • app/build/
  • .gradle/
  • .idea/libraries/
  • .idea/workspace.xml
  • local.properties
When you share an Android project from Android Studio via SVN, the order of the steps in which you do that is very important:

 

  1. When the respective (not yet shared) project is open in Adroid Studio, open the "Settings" dialog (File -> Settings...) and select and open the "Version Control" category.

     

  2. In this category, select "Subversion" and the "General" tab. Uncheck all checkboxes (in particular for box "Use command line client").

     

  3. Then select "Ignored Files" in the category "Version Control" and all of the above folders and files to be ignored (using the "+" button on the right side, and the pop up dialig which opens then).

     

  4. Once you have done that, you can enable version control for this project (VCS -> Version Control Integration...) and select subversion in the pop up dialog.

     

    Note that this does not yet share the project to any repository, it just enables the sharing via subversion for this project.

     

  5. Now you can share the project. To this end, right click on the top folder of the project, select "Subversion > Share Directory...". In the opened dialog, create a repository location (use the URL of the repository of your group); and then select a folder in that repository. Make sure that the settings in "Define share target" are set correctly (you probably want to use "In new "XXX" folder at selected repository location" or "In new "XXX/trunk" folder at selected repository location". When asked for fromat version, I recommend to use version 1.6.

     

  6. Then you can actually commit the project (right click on project folder, Subversion -> Commit Directory...). When you do that for the first time, it sometimes happens that ignored files show up in the list of files and directories to be committed. Then abort the commit, and first delete these files from the directory (don't worry they will automatically be created later again). And only after that do the commit. And when they are recreated and appear for commit later again, mark them to be ignored.

     

  7. When make changes in the future, you can simply commit them. But you should always check whether some of the file or folders that should be ignored, are on the list of committed files. If that is the case, delete them again and only after you did that do the commit (this will also delete them from the repository in case they ended up there).

     

  8. Note that, in Android Studio, all changes you make will be added to a change list for later commits. By default, there is a default change list; later on, your can create other change lists, if you want; such lists can be used to track changes that belong together and commit these changes together. To begin with, the default change list is fine.

     

To import a project from a repository, you can use "File -> New -> Subversion" and then selecting a respective folder in a repository. You might want to clean up the ignored files (Settings -> Version Control, Ignored Files) after the import and an intial build. And sometimes igorned files will end up on the list of committed files again. In that case, make sure that you delete them again before you commit them and mark them as ignored (right click on file, Subversion -> Ignore).

 

When you submit your Android Studio projects as some of the deliverables later (e.g. technology experiment, 1st and 2nd prototype, and final submission), make sure that non of the files and folders mentioned above are committed to the respective folder for the tag (URL to the SVN repository) that you submit.

 

 

Ekkart Kindler (), Sept 24, 2015