Accessing Your Test Web Site form Your Physical Android Test Device

Hello again

Well I’m just finishing reading an advance copy of HTML5 in Action and I’ve been testing things out via a variety of web browsers.

Then I thought let’s use the Android device besides me.  It’s attached to the network so the browser can see the local test web sites.

Right no problems it’s on a hostname that maps to the HTML5 CNAME in my DNS.  So I fire up the Android browser and type in:

http://html5

Web site not found is the only response.

Much messing about with host files most important of which was discovering that the following works:

adb shell ping <ip-address | hostname>

So I try

C:\DEV>adb shell ping html5
ping: unknown host html5

Then I try

C:\DEV>adb shell ping html5.xxx.int
PING websitedev.xxx.int (192.168.1.150) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.150: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=22.5 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.150: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=11.0 ms

So the lesson learned is that the host resolver will not pick up the default domain name, and why should it it’s not like its a Windows device.

Back to the browser and

http://html5.xxx.int

Works perfectly.

Cheers

Sebastian

 

 

Developers only tend to see what helps them do development

A quote from Gina Holden who has dealt with developers for longer than anyone should really have to.

It came up in discussion about what is agile programming, or rather what is Agile?

I pointed her to the original Agile Manifesto and her comment was:

Sounds great and practical apart from “Customer collaboration over contract negotiation” – that’s just stupid and naive.

We then had a little discussion about the difference between ‘over’ and ‘instead of’ and I pointed out that most developers treat the right hand side (or RHS as we techies like to call it) as BAD whilst the left hand side (or LHS) as GOOD and that this was not the point.  The aim is really LHS GOOD, RHS GREAT.

This then gave rise to the fantastic quote from Gina:

Developers only tend to see what helps them do development – not what the rest of the project is doing……

And this gave me pause.

I think of Agile as a thing in itself but really it’s just part of the development chain, scrub that, it’s part of the delivery chain, scrub that it’s a way of looking at the whole project.

Yes the whole project.  Not just definition, not just development, not just deployment.  It’s a way of looking at the entire lifecycle from cradle to grave, of an idea.  It could all be agile from having the idea to delivering the first version to sun setting the final version.

With this in mind and bearing in mind we have just started on an idea

Help people get places via public transport

maybe we should be doing it.

More to follow.

Cheers

Sebastian

Deploying Development Releases to Real Android Real Devices

The very first version of Transports of Delight, a useful travel companion Android App, is ready to be deployed to our real Android devices for testing.

This is a very minimal featured release being used prototype our development, test and deploy processes.

So how did it go?

Not well at all.

Why?

Well it turns out Microsofts Hyper-V engine does not support USB devices.  This means the ADB (Android Development Bridge) cannot access the test machine to install the software.

So what are my options?

1. Copy the .adk files via:
   1. Copy from development machine workspace\<Project>\bin to a physical machine transfer share.
   2. Copy from the transfer share to a USB drive.
   3. Attach the USB drive to the target Android device.
   4. Copy from the USB drive /mnt/usbhost1 to the relevant area, e.g. a backup area.
   5. Restore the apk backup
2. Install the development environment on a physical machine.

So option 2 it is.

This is when the mantra Marcus and I have been chanting in SCRUM meetings for years now shows it’s true worth.

“Deploy Early, Deploy Often”.

Cheers

Sebastian