Electric Cloud optimises software production for Android device manufacturers  

August 12, 2010 // Phil Ling

New enhancements to ElectricCommander and ElectricAccelerator improve the software build-test-deploy process for teams developing Android devices

Electric Cloud has enhanced its support for Android development environments, with the creation of new ElectricCommander plugins for the Gerrit and Git development tools, as well as support for automated testing on Android devices.

The company also announced improvements to  ElectricAccelerator designed to support fast Android software builds. These enhancements automate and accelerate software production processes for both pure-Android and cross-platform device development.   In order to stay competitive and leverage the features of the latest technology, device manufacturers must be able to quickly integrate the latest Android releases into their production workflow. Because many manufacturers support more than one device platform and  multiple build and test environments, the software production process becomes quite complex.   

“Tools for automating and  streamlining development processes will be essential to sustain the growth of  Android devices,” said Martin Van Ryswyk, Vice President of Engineering for Electric Cloud. “Manufacturers looking to harness the speed of open-source innovation and get their products to a demanding enterprise market with a high degree of quality need effective tools to integrate, accelerate and automate their development processes.”  

Electric Cloud's  ElectricCommander and ElectricAccelerator solutions are optimised for Android  development environments, improving manufacturers' ability to deliver devices on time and with high software quality.  ElectricCommander speeds the development cycle by coordinating the entire software production process and supporting multiple operating systems, devices, and versions with a single  interface.  The new ElectricCommander plugins are tailored specifically to handle the complexity of Android device software development. One of these plugins enables direct interaction with physical test devices using the Android  Data Bridge (ADB) protocol and Fastboot technology.  This allows ElectricCommander to flash images, push applications, and execute code directly on an Android device enabling fast, frequent testing while minimizing manual  intervention.    

ElectricCommander's Gerrit  plugin automates the Android code review workflow, speeding what is typically a manual review-test-approve process.  Gerrit notifies a designated expert that a change is ready and these experts approve or decline that submission before continuing the rest of the release process. With the plugin, ElectricCommander can automatically build and test the submission and even act as a reviewer within Gerrit, automatically accepting or declining a submission based on the success or failure of the build and test cycle.   

ElectricCommander also supports a plugin for the Git source control system which enables seamless preflight builds, testing and Continuous Integration. The Git plugin automatically extracts code from the repository, builds using the latest changes in code, runs a specified series of tests and returns results.    Further streamlining the release process, Electric Cloud's ElectricAccelerator shortens the Android build cycle by five times or more through parallel processing and dependency management. ElectricAccelerator ensures the complete technology stack – not just  the Android kernel – builds quickly and accurately. ElectricAccelerator runs on  multiple platforms, including the latest versions of Ubuntu Linux, a popular  platform for Android development.

www.electric-cloud.com

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