Introduction

We recently announced the M1 release of Spring Android, and with that release some questions have arisen around how to build an Android application utilizing the Spring Android Rest Template and Spring Android Commons Logging libraries. Google provides several methods for compiling an Android application, including SDK command line tools, and the ADT (Android Development Tools) Plugin for Eclipse. Unfortunately, neither of these methods includes integrated dependency management support.

Overview

As Java developers we have come to appreciate tools such as Maven and Gradle for managing external dependencies. While traditional Java applications run in a JVM, Android applications run on the Dalvik virtual machine. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format. It runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format. A build tool will need to support this process if it is going to be able to compile a compatible Android application with dependencies.

There are basically two options for including external libraries in your Android application. The first is to manually copy the jars into the libs directory within your project and update the classpath within Eclipse or STS (SpringSource Tool Suite). This is the simplest solution, and the one most supported by the ADT plugin. The disadvantage is that you have to manage the dependencies manually. Alternatively, a third party plugin such as the Maven Android Plugin can be utilized to automatically include the dependencies from a Maven repository.

In this post I will walk through the process of using the Android command line tools, Maven, the Maven Android Plugin, and Android Maven artifacts to compile a sample application that utilizes the Spring Android libraries, and deploy it to the Android emulator. After you have configured Maven, it is easy to create a build, deploy it to the emulator, run tests, and package the app for deployment to the Android Market. Before running the sample code, we will first highlight the configuration settings necessary in the pom.xml. The components used in this example are listed below.

• SpringSource Tool Suite 2.5.1
• Android SDK Revision 8
• Maven Android Plugin 2.8.3

Maven Configuration

This section covers the parts of a pom.xml that are required for developing with Spring Android and the Maven Android Plugin. ]]> svn0204@gmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:56:30 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138:spring-into-mobile-application-development&catid=44:spring&Itemid=231 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138:spring-into-mobile-application-development&catid=44:spring&Itemid=231 At SpringOne2gx we announced exciting new initiatives in the areas of social media and mobile application development. A few weeks ago, Craig Walls released Spring Social. Today, Roy Clarkson released Spring Mobile and Spring Android. In this post, I'd like to highlight these projects and share how Spring aims to simplify mobile application development.

Choices in Mobile Application Development

If you attended SpringOne2gx this year, you've seen Greenhouse, an app we built for our community that also serves as a reference and driver for Spring technology. Craig showed you some of the social elements of Greenhouse, such as the ability to connect your account with Twitter and Facebook. There are also a number of mobile elements. Specifically, Greenhouse doubles as a mobile web app, and sports native Greenhouse for iPhone and Android clients.

Like many organizations today, we had to answer the basic question of "what mobile platforms to target?" In the end, we chose to invest in a native experience for iPhone and Android users, while also developing a cross-platform mobile web app. Our decision to go native was driven by the fact the app is consumer-oriented, and a large number of prospective consumers (application developers) own iPhone and Android devices. At the same time, the mobile web app aims to provide a good baseline experience that works cross-platform, something that's possible today with the rise of WebKit and HTML 5.

From our development work, grew Spring Framework contributions: first, a Spring Mobile project that provides extensions to Spring MVC for developing mobile web apps; and second, a Spring Android project that supports the development of native Android clients that communicate with Spring-based back-ends. I'll take you through each of these projects in turn.

Subversion, or SVN, is a stable version control system designed for maintaining versions over files. As a very mature project, having started in 2000, Subversion is the generally accepted standard for managing versions of files in software projects. A number of plugins and interfaces are available for Subversion; for example, the Eclipse IDE has near-seamless integration with Subversion through the Subclipse plugin. While a number of newer version control systems, known as distributed version control systems, are better suited for managing a team of distributed developers, Subversion remains the standard for ease of installation and use in single developer environments.

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 09:24:04 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136:working-with-subversion&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136:working-with-subversion&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 To manage our code using our SVN server, we're going to need a client. One of the most popular clients for Windows, which we'll be using today, is TortoiseSVN. Tortoise integrates well with the Windows shell: we'll generally be using it through the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer. Tortoise is fairly transparent, integrating cleanly while providing helpful information all over your project. It also works out of the box with IDEs that provide access to the shell menu, such as PhpED.

Download the latest copy of TortoiseSVN from the project page – I'm using v1.5.0. Install it with all the default options.

Importing our project into the repository
We'll use TortoiseSVN to place a particular folder under version control. Let's create a sample project with a PHP script in it. I'm storing my project in C:\projects\helloworld with an index.php file inside, although it doesn't matter where you store your project or what files are inside it.

Load up a Windows Explorer window and navigate to the folder above your project folder – for example, C:\projects. Right-click on your project folder – e.g. Helloworld – and select TortoiseSVN > Import.

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 09:06:33 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135:new-setting-up-subversion-for-development-on-windows&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135:new-setting-up-subversion-for-development-on-windows&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 Setting up a Subversion server on Windows

We have a number of options for installing an SVN server under Windows. One of them involves integrating with Apache, which offers some advantages in terms of integration with existing files. However, it requires some additional configuration – and, of course, a working install of Apache. Instead, we're going to use an easy to use server package endorsed by Collabnet,, the company behind Subversion. The VisualSVN Server allows us to quickly install a Subversion server just like any other application under Windows, then manage it via a familiar interface – a snap-in for the MS Management Console (mmc).

Installing the server

Head over to the download page of VisualSVN Server and grab the latest copy; I'm working with 1.5. Run through the install procedure till you see this screen:

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 08:03:02 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134:subversion-properties&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134:subversion-properties&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 Properties

We’ve already covered in detail how Subversion stores and retrieves various versions of files and directories in its repository. Whole chapters have been devoted to this most fundamental piece of functionality provided by the tool. And if the versioning support stopped there, Subversion would still be complete from a version control perspective.

But it doesn’t stop there.

In addition to versioning your directories and files, Subversion provides interfaces for adding, modifying, and removing versioned metadata on each of your versioned directories and files. We refer to this metadata as properties, and they can be thought of as two-column tables that map property names to arbitrary values attached to each item in your working copy. Generally speaking, the names and values of the properties can be whatever you want them to be, with the constraint that the names must contain only ASCII characters. And the best part about these properties is that they, too, are versioned, just like the textual contents of your files. You can modify, commit, and revert property changes as easily as you can file content changes. And the sending and receiving of property changes occurs as part of your typical commit and update operations—you don’t have to change your basic processes to accommodate them.

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 07:54:18 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=133:subversion-sometimes-you-just-need-to-clean-up&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=133:subversion-sometimes-you-just-need-to-clean-up&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 Sometimes You Just Need to Clean Up

Now that we’ve covered the day-to-day tasks that you’ll frequently use Subversion for, we’ll review a few administrative tasks relating to your working copy.

Disposing of a Working Copy

Subversion doesn’t track either the state or the existence of working copies on the server, so there’s no server overhead to keeping working copies around. Likewise, there’s no need to let the server know that you’re going to delete a working copy.

If you’re likely to use a working copy again, there’s nothing wrong with just leaving it on disk until you’re ready to use it again, at which point all it takes is an svn update to bring it up to date and ready for use.

However, if you’re definitely not going to use a working copy again, you can safely delete the entire thing, but you’d be well served to take a look through the working copy for unversioned files. To find these files, run svn status and review any files that are prefixed with a ? to make certain that they’re not of importance. After you’re done reviewing, you can safely delete your working copy.

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 07:44:27 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=132:subversion-basic-work-cycle&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=132:subversion-basic-work-cycle&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 Subversion has numerous features, options, bells, and whistles, but on a day-to-day basis, odds are that you will use only a few of them. In this section, we’ll run through the most common things that you might find yourself doing with Subversion in the course of a day’s work.

The typical work cycle looks like this:

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 07:41:17 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131:subversion-authenticating-as-a-different-user&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131:subversion-authenticating-as-a-different-user&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 Authenticating As a Different User

Since Subversion caches auth credentials by default (both username and password), it conveniently remembers who you were acting as the last time you modified your working copy. But sometimes that’s not helpful—particularly if you’re working in a shared working copy such as a system configuration directory or a web server document root. In this case, just pass the --username option on the command line, and Subversion will attempt to authenticate as that user, prompting you for a password if necessary.

You can get new files into your Subversion repository in two ways: svn import and svn add. We’ll discuss svn import now and will discuss svn add later in this chapter when we review a typical day with Subversion.

svn import

The svn import command is a quick way to copy an unversioned tree of files into a repository, creating intermediate directories as necessary. svn import doesn’t require a working copy, and your files are immediately committed to the repository. You typically use this when you have an existing tree of files that you want to begin tracking in your Subversion repository. For example:

$ svnadmin create /new/svn/newrepos  
$ svn import mytree file:///new/svn/newrepos/some/project \               -m "Initial import"  
Adding         mytree/foo.c  
Adding         mytree/bar.c  
Adding         mytree/subdir  
Adding         mytree/subdir/quux.h    

The previous example copied the contents of directory mytree under the directory some/project in the repository:

$ svn list file:///new/svn/newrepos/some/project  
bar.c  
foo.c  
subdir/  

Note that after the import is finished, the original tree is not converted into a working copy. To start working, you still need to svn checkout a fresh working copy of the tree.

$ svn help import
import: Commit an unversioned file or tree into the repository.
usage: import [PATH] URL

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 06:06:32 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=128:the-repository&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=128:the-repository&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 The Repository

Subversion is a centralized system for sharing information. At its core is a repository, which is a central store of data. The repository stores information in the form of a filesystem tree—a typical hierarchy of files and directories. Any number of clients connect to the repository, and then read or write to these files. By writing data, a client makes the information available to others; by reading data, the client receives information from others.Figure 1.1, “A typical client/server system” illustrates this.

Figure 1.1. A typical client/server system

]]> saveen0204@hotmail.com (Administrator) frontpage Sun, 26 Dec 2010 05:55:53 +0000 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127:what-is-subversion&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 http://www.svn4u.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127:what-is-subversion&catid=42:svn&Itemid=229 What Is Subversion?

Subversion is a free/open source version control system. That is, Subversion manages files and directories, and the changes made to them, over time. This allows you to recover older versions of your data or examine the history of how your data changed. In this regard, many people think of a version control system as a sort of “time machine.”