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How to build specific app APK with Android Studio when the project contains multiple apps?

I try to build and run the sample helloworld/mobile in project (https://github.com/android/car-samples)

My question is about how to select the sample app directory as described in README.md:

  1. Select a sample app directory (e.g. helloworld/mobile) in the Project Structure UI on the top left. Each sample app has two build targets, one for the mobile platform and the other for the automotive platform. <<<<

I went through Project Structure UI, I tried different possibilities but no way, Build menu always shows Make Module car-simples-main and when I launch Make Module, nothing happens.

Wondering if something has changed in the last Android Studio version, I use Android Studio Chipmunk | 2021.2.1 Patch 1

Anyone can help?

Thanks.

Solution

  • First of all, let's understand how the git directory is structured.

    The directory has the two folders car-lib/CarGearViewerKotlin and car_app_library, which are gradle projects that can be built using gradle.

    How do you know? Any folder contains gradle wrapper and a build.gradle and settings.gradle files means that they're ready to be built using gradle, and these can contain modules inside of them.

    Now helloworld/mobile is a module, or you can view it as a sub-project.

    How do you know? If you open up the parent's settings.gradle file, you will see the line include ':helloworld:mobile' meaning that the directory helloworld/mobile is a sub-project or module for the top level car_app_library project. Modules by themselves are not runnable, they need to be contained in a parent project with top-level gradle files.

    Now the solution for your problem should be: open up these two as projects in Android studio individually: car-lib/CarGearViewerKotlin and car_app_library, it will create a default run configuration for each project. You won't be able to run helloworld/mobile alone, you'll need to run the parent project car-samples/car_app_library.

    However, You should technically be able to open the root directory (the git directory containing all of the projects) and creating a run configurations by hand for each project, and you should be able to run the projects using one Android Studio window opened.