Let’s face it: Turnaround time for Titanium development in Android can be very slow. There are many reasons why, including but not limited to:
- Project staging, including Java code generation
- Compiling, and Dexing the entire Titanium class library whenever a change is made
- General Android emulator slowness
Because of these, and other reasons, prototyping and testing your JavaScript changes in Android can turn out to be astronomically painful. Beginning in Titanium Mobile 1.7.0, these pains will be a thing of the past due to a new feature I’m introducing today called “Fastdev”.
The idea behind Fastdev is simple: Instead of packaging, building, and deploying your app’s files every time you want to see a change, the application requests those files directly from a server running on your machine. This means that any changes that are made locally are instantly available to your application, and the need for a “stop the world” re-deploy is only necessary in very specific instances. On top of this, Fastdev is bi-directional — meaning you can control the app itself directly with the new titanium fastdev command. Right now, app control is limited to restarting and killing the app, but in the future this could be expanded to work in conjunction with our new debugger support to provide dynamic expression evaluation, and other awesome rapid development features.
And now what you’ve all been waiting for — a Fastdev demo
Currently Fastdev is only enabled for the emulator, but we do plan to enable it for device in an upcoming release. If you like living on the edge, Fastdev is available in the latest builds on our CI Builds page.
To get started, simply open a shell, go into your project’s directory, start the Fastdev server, and re-deploy your project.
In OSX / Linux
$ titanium fastdev start &
$ titanium run --platform=android
In Windows
C:\Users\marshall\Code\myApp>start /B titanium fastdev start
C:\Users\marshall\Code\myApp>titanium run --platform=android
Full documentation for Fastdev can be found here: Fastdev Reference for Android
‘prototyping and testing your JavaScript changes in Android can turn out to be astronomically painful’
biggest understatement ever !
thanks for the implementation of FastDev, it was much needed and is appreciated
This is such a needed feature. Looking forward to the release of Titanium Mobile 1.7
Many thanks from Team TripLingo! We were just talking about this yesterday! Good timing!
Neat!
Any possibility of getting Fastdev support on iOS as well?
Wow, super awesome. Looks like the Livetanium project those swedes came up with:
http://blog.krawaller.se/livetanium
Was that the inspiration?
Also… more importantly will you be supporting fastdev for iOS as well, and will that all be available in 1.7.0?
Keep up the good work!
JIT, I’ve been using Livetanium for iOS and it’s great, I was not looking forward to porting my app to Android but now I am!
Yeah thanks for this – things got better with the snapshot support in Android recently but this will make it even better.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!
Really, really _REALLY_ great news!
Good stuff!
This is huge! Thanks! Can’t wait…
Looks, great. Will you do yhe same for iOS development sp we have one way for both platforms?
And when is 1.7 scheduled to be released?
You’re my hero.
[...] Mobile Fastdev for Android The idea behind Fastdev is simple: Instead of packaging, building, and deploying your app’s files every time you want to [...]
Just tested it, really really nice! Honeycomb still slow (yes, it’s the emulator, i know) http://bit.ly/lMJjMz
Hi Guys,
u got an idea when Titanium will be available for Windows Phone 7 ?
[...] die sich wegen dem elend langsamen Build-Prozess und Android-Emulator rumquälen müssen, wurde mit Fastdev eine Möglichkeit implementiert, Änderungen am JavaScript über einen lokalen Server live an den [...]
Ahh…
Very nice. Thanks guys.
[...] Fastdev для Android: позволяет ускорить прототипирование и тестирования приложения путем пропуска шагов сборки и деплоймента. Как это работает можно посмотреть в этом видео: [...]
[...] Fastdev for Android speeds prototyping and testing by enabling local changes to be instantly available to your application. Fastdev eliminates the time-consuming steps of packaging, building and deploying apps with each change. [...]
Will we be able to style using JSS and see it instantly too?
Also, do you have any plans for an XML based UI system, akin to Silverlight’s XAML… that would be amazing (even better, if it had a visual designer too). A way to truly keep UI and logic separated.
I can’t see it being beyond impossibility to convert an XML file containing nested elements into the JavaScript needed.
Styling apps at the moment is trial and error.
[...] 每次想在Android Simulator測試都要等titanium compile 2-3分鐘真的很費時。Titanium 有一個Fastdev 模式，啓動了每次測試就不用等他這麼久了。(只需大概10秒) [...]
FastDev is most promising way of Developing Titnaium App with Android.But Even then when large number of Components sets on a Single Windows it always extemely slow. In device it is better but of course not UPTO the Mark.CAn u provide me any ways for resolving the issue When I require large number of Components (approx. 25-30) on a single Screen.
[...] bloß nicht wieder schließen! Titanium Studio verfügt standardmäßig über die Eigenschaft fastdev, welche es euch ermöglicht, ohne erneuten Emulatorstart Änderungen an der App vorzunehmen. Dazu [...]