Which IDE is best supported by Cocos2d-x for Android development?

Hi,

A simple question…

I want to start a new project for Android platform.

Which IDE should I use?

Regards.

On PC, I assume most use MS Visual Studio for development, and Eclipse for Android build+testing.
I doubt the C++ side matters much (MS Visual Studio), but for Eclipse you will find much more help/tutorials on how to set everything up correctly.

Thanks.

Off-topic:

Google dropped their support for Eclipse in favor of Android Studio.
Is there any plans in observable future to integrate Cocos2d-x development into Android Studio, add tutorials on how to setup a project and etc just like for Eclipse was done before?
Or the plan is to use Eclipse as long as possible?

XCODE is best if you have a mac machine, but if you have a windows machine go for Eclipse. I feel comfortable with eclipse.

@sanjaya can you please share a link on how to use XCODE for Android development? I thought it iOS mostly…

yes you are absolutely right !! XCODE is for iOS not for Android. For Android development Eclipse/Android Studio is the preferable IDE.

I read in the 3.7 Beta/RC thread, that Android Studio support is coming with the 3.7 release.

Good news! :smiley:

I currently use Xcode for iOS/Mac, VS 2013 Community for Windows Phone and Eclipse for Android.

Because of changes to .build_native for Andorid, if you use the .build_native from cocos2d-x 3.4 or greater, then there are a bunch of issues with getting Eclipse native debugging to work. Currently have not found a solution to get it to work. Will post the issues in a separate thread and add a link to it here later.

I have tried Android Studio with cocos2d-x 3.7, but had issue with getting it to build properly. Also have not been able to find anything about native debugging with Android Studio, so when you get strange crashes in native code, the Android Studio is kind of useless to help solve the problem. Hopefully native debugging is there or will come soon.

A few weeks ago I posted this, but no response :frowning:
Would be great to hear feedback about the requirements that I listed for an Android IDE.

I think @brightlightapps has had success with using Visual Studio 2013 Community for Android Development with what I think is an NVIDIA plugin…

NVIDIA also came out with AndroidWorks for all Android platforms.
https://developer.nvidia.com/AndroidWorks

Current issues with using Eclipse that I have yet to find a fix for, other than using the old version of build_native.py.

I will second Nvidia’s AndroidWorks for Visual Studio Android development. It used to be called ADP, and required a lot of configuration to work with cocos2d-x…

But now it is much, much easier. You can create a new demo project with “cocos new”, import the .sln file into Visual Studio to build the Win32 version, then create an Android project imported from proj.android and deploy directly to device with breakpoints and variable view all working correctly out-of-the-box.

I mean to make a tutorial on this setup, but there’s still a couple issues-- first of all to do correct dependency checking to rebuild a lib when you change one of its files. But for debugging it is golden.

I’m working on a Mac and my combo looks like this: XCode + Android Studio + cocos command prompt. I dont know how can someone use Eclipse… it lags as hell, AS >>>>>> Eclipse (imo)

I’ve managed it setup android project for Android Studio and it works somehow.

But I can’t see Classes folder in project structure view.

Can someone please tell how to add Classes folder to Android Studio project?

Looks like Android Studio has major improvements coming soon. And per Pandamicro’s comment here and given Android M’s rumored release coming in September, it shouldn’t be more than a few months before native debugging in Android Studio is possible (hopefully in a streamlined manner).

Technically Android Studio v1.3 Preview RC1 is currently available.

Taken from: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2015/05/android-m-developer-preview-tools.html

Android Studio v1.3 Preview - To help take advantage of the M Developer Preview features, we are releasing a new version of Android Studio. Most notable is a much requested feature from our Android NDK & game developers: code editing and debugging for C/C++ code. Based on JetBrains Clion platform, the Android Studio NDK plugin provides features such as refactoring and code completion for C/C++ code alongside your Java code. Java and C/C++ code support is integrated into one development experience free of charge for Android app developers. Update to Android Studio v1.3 via the Canary channel and let us know what you think.