Appendix A. Debugging tools of the trade
In this chapter
- The Android Debug Bridge
- Accessing system logs
- Strict mode
We covered many different topics in this book, hopefully in enough depth to not leave too many unanswered questions, but we wanted to talk about a few more things. The following appendixes contain useful bits and bobs about topics that we merely touched on briefly as part of a technique, or that didn’t quite fit elsewhere in this book.
We have a total of four appendixes, labeled A through D. We tried to keep every topic self-contained, so that the order in which you read through them doesn’t matter, although we believe the way we arranged them should be the most natural one when working through them in order.
That being said, we start in appendix A with some advanced debugging hints and tricks by revisiting the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), as well as a more recent addition to the SDK called StrictMode. In appendix B, we’ll look at Android from a completely new angle, showing you alternative approaches to development that leverage web views and JavaScript, and even entirely new languages like Scala. Appendix C will shed light on a useful optimization tool that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves: Pro-Guard. Finally, we’ll look at a second tool that’s similarly underappreciated: a scripted Android automation tool called Monkeyrunner. We’ll start in this appendix by revisiting the ADB.