Ant not rebuilding Android application with `ant debug install`

Question

Starting with a clean project created with:

android create project -n something -t android-7 -p something -k com.example.something -a Something

When I run ant debug install and open the application in my emulator, I see (as expected)

Here's where it goes bad. I now change something trivial in the application. In this example, I'm going to remove the setContentView call from the main activity so it looks like this:

package com.example.something;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
public class Something extends Activity {
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        //setContentView(R.layout.main);   REMOVED
    }
}

Now I rebuild the application with ant debug install and run it in the emulator. I see this:

This is wrong. I just removed the text with my previous edit. If I do ant clean before ant debug install, I get the expected result:

I don't want to have to run ant clean before each time I run ant debug install. How can I make ant actually rebuild the program without running ant clean each time?

---

Details:

Here's the output from the inital ant debug install:

$ ant debug install
Buildfile: /home/x/android/something/build.xml

-set-mode-check:

-set-debug-files:

-set-debug-mode:

-debug-obfuscation-check:

-setup:
     [echo] Gathering info for something...
    [setup] Android SDK Tools Revision 16
    [setup] Project Target: Android 2.1
    [setup] API level: 7
    [setup] 
    [setup] ------------------
    [setup] Resolving library dependencies:
    [setup] No library dependencies.
    [setup] 
    [setup] ------------------
    [setup] 
    [setup] WARNING: No minSdkVersion value set. Application will install on all Android versions.

-build-setup:
     [echo] Creating output directories if needed...
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/x/android/something/bin
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/x/android/something/bin/res
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/x/android/something/gen
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/x/android/something/bin/classes

-pre-build:

-code-gen:
     [echo] ----------
     [echo] Handling aidl files...
     [aidl] No AIDL files to compile.
     [echo] ----------
     [echo] Handling RenderScript files...
[renderscript] No RenderScript files to compile.
     [echo] ----------
     [echo] Handling Resources...
     [aapt] Generating resource IDs...

-pre-compile:

-compile:
    [javac] Compiling 2 source files to /home/x/android/something/bin/classes

-post-compile:

-obfuscate:

-dex:
      [dex] Converting compiled files and external libraries into /home/x/android/something/bin/classes.dex...

-crunch:
   [crunch] Crunching PNG Files in source dir: /home/x/android/something/res
   [crunch] To destination dir: /home/x/android/something/bin/res
   [crunch] Crunched 0 PNG files to update cache

-package-resources:
     [aapt] Creating full resource package...

-package:
[apkbuilder] Current build type is different than previous build: forced apkbuilder run.
[apkbuilder] Creating something-debug-unaligned.apk and signing it with a debug key...

-do-debug:
 [zipalign] Running zip align on final apk...
     [echo] Debug Package: /home/x/android/something/bin/something-debug.apk

debug:
[propertyfile] Creating new property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop

install:
     [echo] Installing /home/x/android/something/bin/something-debug.apk onto default emulator or device...
     [exec] 66 KB/s (4410 bytes in 0.065s)
     [exec]     pkg: /data/local/tmp/something-debug.apk
     [exec] Success

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 5 seconds

Here's the output from the second ant debug install after the edit:

$ ant debug install
Buildfile: /home/x/android/something/build.xml

-set-mode-check:

-set-debug-files:

-set-debug-mode:

-debug-obfuscation-check:

-setup:
     [echo] Gathering info for something...
    [setup] Android SDK Tools Revision 16
    [setup] Project Target: Android 2.1
    [setup] API level: 7
    [setup] 
    [setup] ------------------
    [setup] Resolving library dependencies:
    [setup] No library dependencies.
    [setup] 
    [setup] ------------------
    [setup] 
    [setup] WARNING: No minSdkVersion value set. Application will install on all Android versions.

-build-setup:
     [echo] Creating output directories if needed...

-pre-build:

-code-gen:
     [echo] ----------
     [echo] Handling aidl files...
     [aidl] No AIDL files to compile.
     [echo] ----------
     [echo] Handling RenderScript files...
[renderscript] No RenderScript files to compile.
     [echo] ----------
     [echo] Handling Resources...
     [aapt] No changed resources. R.java and Manifest.java untouched.

-pre-compile:

-compile:
    [javac] Compiling 1 source file to /home/x/android/something/bin/classes

-post-compile:

-obfuscate:

-dex:
      [dex] No new compiled code. No need to convert bytecode to dalvik format.

-crunch:
   [crunch] Crunching PNG Files in source dir: /home/x/android/something/res
   [crunch] To destination dir: /home/x/android/something/bin/res
   [crunch] Crunched 0 PNG files to update cache

-package-resources:
     [aapt] No changed resources or assets. something.ap_ remains untouched

-package:
[apkbuilder] No changes. No need to create apk.

-do-debug:
 [zipalign] No changes. No need to run zip-align on the apk.
     [echo] Debug Package: /home/x/android/something/bin/something-debug.apk

debug:
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop
[propertyfile] Updating property file: /home/x/android/something/bin/build.prop

install:
     [echo] Installing /home/x/android/something/bin/something-debug.apk onto default emulator or device...
     [exec] 88 KB/s (4410 bytes in 0.048s)
     [exec]     pkg: /data/local/tmp/something-debug.apk
     [exec] Success

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 3 seconds

Notice that the -dex, -package, and -debug steps all seem to think that I didn't change anything.

Answer 1

Here is the solution that works for me:

1. Copy your workspace to another location
2. delete all projects in the current workspace CAUTION do not delete on DISK

3. open the terminal and write the following 4.Close Eclipse.

   cd /home/user/workspace/.metadata/.plugins
   rm -rf org.eclipse.core.resources
   

   • Start Eclipse
   • Do File->Import
   • General->Existing Projects into Workspace
   • Click the "Select root directory" field and browse to each subfolder in your workspace folder, and import.

Answer 2

You need to update the test-project for the changes to get reflected, and then do the ant debug install 1. ~/android-sdks/tools/android update test-project -m ../SampleProject/ -p ../SampleProjectTest/ 2. ant debug install

Answer 3

I've just downgraded to SDK r15 — there's no such bug in it.

Downloads are still there:
http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r15-linux.tgz
http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r15-windows.zip
http://dl.google.com/android/installer_r15-windows.exe
http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r15-macosx.zip

Most relevant issue in android's bugtracker for SDK r16 bug:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=23141

Answer 4

I was asking about this in #android-dev, apparently there is a bug in sdk r16 which breaks the and steps:

21:25 < pfn> I have that exact problem with sdk r16
21:25 < pfn> the answer is to delete classes.dex and yourapp-debug.apk before every ant debug

Unfortunately this fix doesn't seem to work so it seems we're stuck with having a clean build each time.