Android 2.3 Gingerbread SDK Review and Bugs

ADB has moved to /platform-tools directory from /tools.

SDK 2.3 is not backwards compatible with older ubuntu's because GLIBC_2.11 is only available in newer distributions.

There is a workaround solution for this however, found by DrBrain:

1. Add this repository: "deb security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security main" to software sources (/etc/apt/sources.list)

2. Start update aptitude: sudo apt-get update

3. Start update libc6: sudo apt-get install libc6

When I tried this, on my ubuntu 9.10, it wanted to remove +2,5Gb of random packages that used the old version of glibc (gnome etc.). So after I made a fresh install of ubuntu 10.10, it worked like it is supposed to. A few months ago I had to move back from 10.10 to 9.x because eclipse and the SDK did not work well together, now it is the other way around.

In he the old layout editor one used to be able to just put layout items into (empty wrap_content sized) layouts. Now, on the new layout editor one can't use the editor for that, but has to switch to xml view and do it by hand.

The small icons on the outline window are also gone, and one can't delete or move an item with a click of a button. The highlight around the items is a sweet add-on, and it's good that one can move around already deployed items in the editor by dragging them.

ADB and SDK manager:

3rd party add-ons are now available from the SDK manager. The SDK manager is strange, as it still displays the updates that are already installed, and it even lets one reinstall them over and over again, which I did, until I realized that they were already installed and working.

One used to be able to put %s %d etc. in strings.xml, now one has to format it in a specific way.

The first time I re-checked my projects from the svn server I ran into this. First thing I did was projects/clean, and obviously R crapped itself, and I got a few hundred errors because of it. It took me some time to figure out that I had a % symbol in my strings.xml.

To sum it up, this new version of the SDK doesn't feel like it's ready for production purposes. There are a lot of hidden errors that I ran into. So if you are in the middle of a project, don't waste time by upgrading your SDK and risk bumping into the problems above.