Quick start guide for Developers

February 2, 2022 ยท View on GitHub

  1. Download and Install Android Studio

  2. Fork the Git repository.

  3. Clone your fork to your local machine.

    • Click "Clone" on your fork's Github page, and copy the Git URL. It should look like:
      git@github.com:yourname/apps-android-commons.git

  4. Open the project in Android Studio.

    • Open Android Studio
    • In the menu bar, click File > New > Project from Version Control... > Git
      OR
      (if Quick Start menu open): Get from Version Control > Git
    • Enter the Git URL you obtained in step 3.
    • Specify a local directory you would like to save the project in and select OK.

  5. Start contributing! Be sure to read through the developer workflow and the code style guide.

Building the source code

You can build the beta and prod flavor of the app for debug build type using the Android Studio. Read up more about flavors and build types here. Several features are not usable with the beta flavor. The only advantage of the beta flavor is that you can do test modifications and upload test pictures without getting banned. Please do not upload any copyrighted picture though, you would get banned even on the beta environment.

You can either directly invoke the following commands using your terminal or you can edit configurations in android studio and add these configs. To build the beta debug variant use:

:app:installBetaDebug

To build the prod debug variant use:

:app:installProdDebug

Note:

  • You can also build and test the release variant for both beta and prod but you would need to use your own signing keys for it. Read up more about signing keys here. Building and testing release variant might be required when you are debugging an issue that is happening just on release builds and not on debug builds. Most likely it should be a proguard issue.

Frequent issues

  • Issue: Cannot run program "git" (in directory "<project path>"): CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified
    Fix: Make sure git is installed and added in the PATH environment variable. Don't forget to restart the machine after updating your PATH environment variable.

Did you run into other problems? Please add any issue which is not captured here along with its fix. If you don't have edit permissions, submit a new issue.