Ten Reasons for Android development using Visual Studio: Visual Android

Ten Reasons for Android development using Visual Studio: Visual Android

[Original article address] Top 10 reasons to use Visual Studio for C ++ Android Development!

Visual Studio: C ++ cross-platform mobile solution

Visual Studio () is rapidly becoming a cross-platform C ++ IDE. Our goal is to make Visual Studio A choice for your R & D of C ++ cross-platform code, whether your goal is Windows (UWP), Android, iOS, Linux, Xbox, PlayStation, marmalade or more. Over the past year or so, we have enabled support for Android, iOS (PreView), and improved integration with the popular cross-platform game engine Marmalade, A new compilation tool (Clang/C2) is introduced to improve code portability between Windows and non-Windows platforms ). If you want to talk about the Android platform in detail, this article is also true. C ++ is usually used in the most common computing-intensive applications, such as games and physical simulation. But today, many applications are using the cross-platform nature of C ++ to write some or all of their applications.

There are many examples of this phenomenon, which is particularly common in more complex software development companies. Specific platforms, cross-platform, new popular applications such as Facebook Moments, Dropbox, Office, Skype, and popular games (such as fruit ninja, tribal war, EA Sports Titles) they are all written in cross-platform C ++. If you look at the top 50 Android apps, one of them (about 75%) uses C ++. In today's cross-platform world, if you want to optimize fast iteration, application performance, and the appearance and feeling of the local machine. Most of these top-level development companies will choose to use C ++ to compile their UI and shared code business logic on specific platform code after the trade-off.

Therefore, the Android experience of Visual Studio was released in early 2015, and we were warmly welcomed and received feedback from our customers. We provide you with some highlights, including Halfbrick Studios (popular game manufacturers such as fruit ninja, Jet Pack Joyride), Electronic Arts, Synergex, autodesk and almost all Microsoft products, such as Office, Bing, Minecraft, Hyperlapse, and more.

POPULAR game Fruit Ninja is being developed with Visual Studio Android

Therefore, there are ten reasons (ranking in no particular order) to explain why Visual Studio is the right choice for your C ++ Android Application Development:

1. Easy access to all android platforms

2. Use C ++ cross-platform templates and examples to quickly start your Android Development

3. a c ++ integrated development environment (iOS, Android, Windows, and more) that supports all mobile platforms)

4. Use powerful cross-platform coding tools

5. Easily share your cross-platform C ++ code

6. The fastest support for building Incredibuild in C ++

7. Provides the fastest and most powerful debugging experience for your Android apps

8. provides the best quality and free Android simulators.

9. Use the HockeyApp to easily collect customers' opinions on your applications

10. Visual Studio is a cross-platform mobile solution (Xamarin,Apache Cordova) instead of cross-platform C ++

Now you have a rough idea. Let's take a look at it in detail.

UseTen Reasons Why Visual Studio is used for C ++ Android Development

#1.Easy access to all android platforms

Visual Studio provides one-stop services for all your C ++ Android development needs. These include the Android Development Kit (SDK, NDK), Apache Ant, Oracle Java JDK, Microsoft Android Emulator, and the templates and examples we provide for you to quickly start. In addition, Visual Studio provides a real-time update mechanism that allows us to dynamically update your Android development environment, similar to updates provided by Google or new features that can improve the development experience.

#2.ExploitationC ++ cross-platform templates and examples to quickly start your Android Development

Visual Studio provides you with a variety of ready-made examples and templates to give you a good start. The template provided today demonstrates how to create an Android Native Activity application and an Android Java Native Interface (JNC) application, an Android application with C ++ shared code that can be used to build iOS and Windows applications and more.

Today's Visual Studio Android example provides the function of porting the NDK sample to creation and operation on Visual Studio. In the future, we plan to introduce other templates and examples for popular C ++ cross-platform technologies and game engines.

#3. One that supports all mobile platformsC ++ integrated development environment

In addition to Android, Visual Studio also supports compiling Windows and iOS applications. In Visual Studio, developers can use the same solution to build applications for all these platforms and use the same world-class coding and debugging experience.

#4.Use powerful cross-platform coding tools

Visual Studio provides a rich coding experience for Android Developers, whether they are writing Java or C ++ code. Yes! Visual Studio2015 recently introduced support for Java, mainly supporting Android Developers who not only have a lot of C ++ code but also have Java code but have to use other editors to implement this part of code.

While the Java language service experience is still in the preview stage, it provides a basic code navigation and smart perception experience. This is a short video, which outlines what these experiences are. The C ++ coding experience is complete and provides services for code navigation, intelligent sensing, and even more advanced refactoring functions. Visual Studio provides an all-in-one service for the complete Android coding experience.

#5.Easily share your cross-platformC ++ code

Visual Studio is a platform that allows iOS, Linux, Windows, Xbox, PlayStation and more application development in addition to Android development. If you are developing a cross-platform application that requires a large number of C ++ code, and are frustrated by the use of a variety of Integrated environments, tool chains, debugging tools, and system generation, visual Studio is worth a try. With Visual Studio, you can easily share and reuse your existing C ++ resources through our project sharing components and capabilities for multiple platforms.

For more information, see "How to Use Visual Studio to develop cross-platform mobile phones by Half Brick, a maker of popular mobile game Fruit Ninja and rocket flying man"

#6.World-classAndroid local application debugging experience

We started to develop an Android development experience mainly to support Microsoft internal teams, such as Office, Bing, Skype, Minecraft and others, until the Android development experience of the C ++ application is perfect. Our work on these wide-range applications provides us with the opportunity to fine tune scalability, correctness, and debugging speed. To achieve it as much as possible, we have optimized the backend debugging function of GDB multiple times. In addition, the Android debugging experience in Visual Studio is not only limited to C ++, but also supports Java debugging. (This is a short video that describes the newly enabled Java debugging experience)

The debugging experience on Visual Studio today also supports debugging pre-built Android applications through other integrated development environments, and other basic debugging functions (breakpoint, one-step execution, monitoring, tracking point, condition breakpoint) and advanced functions, such as debugger visualization (supported by Natvis) and attaching to running Android applications.

#7.FastestC/C ++ Android Application Construction

Microsoft Visual Studio cooperates with Xoreax Incredibuild to establish parallel building plans, execute dynamic resource management, and provide many diagnostic tools to understand and troubleshoot bottlenecks (of course, this is free of charge ), it provides you with the fastest way to build applications on your local machine. In addition, you can use Incredibuild to pay for the SKU. You can also set other accelerator agents to improve the multi-x build on a distributed network. The following is an example of building a popular open source ACE benchmark (enabling Incredibuild ).

The local Visual Studio supports Ant, Gradle, and CMake. We have introduced support for Gradle in our latest updates.

#8. Deploy, test, and debug Android applications using a fast, free, and top-notch Android Simulator

The Android development experience of Visual Studio Android is loaded with a simulator developed by Microsoft to quickly implement editing, creation, and debugging cycles. The Microsoft Visual Studio Android simulator is fast, x86, Hyper-V-based, and provides support for a series of analog sensors, including accelerators, automatic screen rotation, SD card, battery, multi-touch, GPS, camera, audio and more.

#9.UseHockeyAppEasily collect customers' opinions on your applications

Distribute your applications to testers over the network, allowing them to receive available updates. Get early feedback and customer-guided functional improvements. Use the HockeyApp to get information from program crashes to continuously improve the quality of your applications.

#10.Visual Studio is a cross-platform mobile solution (Xamarin), Apache Cordova) Not limited to cross-platform C ++

Although C ++ is suitable for your current applications, you may still consider other popular cross-platform mobile technologies for your other products. Don't worry, Visual Studio cross-platform support is not only limited to C ++ support, but also supports other popular cross-platform mobile development technologies, such: in Visual Studio, Xamarin allows many local applications to use C # for development. Javascript-contained hybrid applications use Apache Cordova and Unity to create 2D and 3D games.

So why choose another one?What about the Android C ++ solution?

So download Visual Studio and try our C ++ Android experience. As part of the Visual Studio development team, we believe that this is the best solution for Android C ++ applications, and we also want to know why you choose any other solutions. Therefore, please contact us or leave your comments to let us know where we need improvement! Want to know