I got tired of worrying about rebuilding my development environment if a PC failed. When I built my Win 10 PC I wanted to use VMs and have nothing on the host except for the Hyper-V role. I installed all my dev tools including multiple versions of LC on a VM.... I even got VB6 and the 32 bit DB drivers working on a 64 bit OS alongside 64 bit MS Office! I was very proud of myself until I tried to install via LC a test build on an Android device. (whoops!!!) Although Android USB device's internal drive data can be viewed on a VM, to my surprise you can't talk directly to the USB device from an Hyper-V VM. There are hardware USB sharing options using SW USB drivers on the VM. These boxes are very expensive, $250.00 US for 4 ports. The performance of these devices are sketchy at best.
Before I go on I want to thank the LC support team for their help, Mark and Panos showed me where and how to hook into the IDE building process. I found a wealth of goodies after poking around in the IDE stacks. So the "Android Remote Tester" plug-in was born. I first envisioned it as a "Test" button just like LCs Test button and an manual copy and install. Then as it always goes the scope expanded to multiple devices, signed builds, automated file copy and install and then (why not) installing pre-built APKs. There are 2 parts: 1) A server on the host machine that the devices are connected to. 2) An IDE Plug-in. The host is any PC/Mac/Linux box that the Android devices USB ports are connected to. This can be the same machine that the LC IDE is running on, or not. The server could even be on a remote machine somewhere else. I my case the server is running on the VM host and the plug-in is on development VMs. I tested both the server and plug-in on Mac(10.11), Windows(XP 32 bit/Win 7-10 64 bit) and Linux Mint 64 bit. I have not tested on 32 bit Linux but I expect it would work just fine. I tested using LC 6, 7 and 8.1.2. In Windows I have the "Android Remote Tester Server" running as an Windo ws Service. I am working getting the server running as a "service" on Mac and Linux(any help here would be appreciated). Beyond the ability to install builds from a VM(or any remote machine) the Android Remote Tester plug-in has these functions that make testing to multiple devices easier: 1) Install test builds to one or more devices(and optionally launch) with one click and one LC build. 2) Build a signed standalone AND install to one or more devices(and optionally launch) with one click and one LC build. 3) Install any existing APK file to one or more devices(and optionally launch) with one click. Requirements/Limitations: 1) The Android "build tools" and "platform tools" needs to be installed on the server machine. The server only needs 2 programs so only a skeleton Android SDK needs to be installed. 2) I have not created any installers. 3) It needs the Indy or Business version of LiveCode. 4) SSL is not implemented. I do my testing on several devices. Doing 4 test builds to install on 4 devices gets old real quick. Building production APKs and then using an Android file manager on 4 devices to install the APK after going thru a bunch of "OK" popups for every install also gets old quick. If anyone is interested in trying it, please drop me a line off list and I will send you the files and instructions for installation on your platform(s). Ralph DiMola IT Director Evergreen Information Services rdim...@evergreeninfo.net _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
