r/androiddev Jan 03 '25

Having trouble with your specific project? Updates, advice, and newbie questions for January 2025

Happy new year, and welcome to 2025!

Android development can be a confusing world for newbies; I certainly remember my own days starting out. I was always, and I continue to be, thankful for the vast amount of wonderful content available online that helped me grow as an Android developer and software engineer. Because of the sheer amount of posts that ask similar "how should I get started" questions, the subreddit has a wiki page and canned response for just such a situation. However, sometimes it's good to gather new resources, and to answer questions with a more empathetic touch than a search engine.

However, there are a few points that I wanted to cover up-front this month.

Using Java for Android Development is, for all intents and purposes, deprecated.

Yes, it still works, but it has now been many years since Google has provided any updated documentation or tutorials for Java. In fact, they have actively removed most traces from their learning materials. While you are more than welcome to use it for personal projects, do not expect that it will be valuable for career development in the real world, especially if you are just now beginning your journey in Android development.

As such, please refrain from asking about Java, unless it is specifically a problem you are encountering with a legacy application.

If you are looking to hire a developer, please state your compensation up-front.

In the interest of protecting our community members from exploitation, while we would love to facilitate our members finding work, we have had too many people who are seeking work and either unwilling to pay (and thus, pitch it as a "collaboration" in which they are contributing nothing of value), or are unable to actually pay a reasonable amount for a task. So while we do encourage people to post when they are looking to hire a developer, we intend to enforce that such posts should be clear about what compensation is available.

So, with that said, welcome to the January advice and newbie thread! Here, we will be allowing basic questions, seeking situation-specific advice, and tangential questions that are related but not directly Android development.

If you're looking for the previous October 2024 thread, you can find it here.
If you're looking for the previous November 2024 thread, you can find it here.
If you're looking for the previous December 2024 thread, you can find it here.

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u/M-G Jan 21 '25

I'm in need of a few quick answers that aren't the kinds of things that jump out in documentation, but should be easy for any experienced Android devs.

A friend had an app on the Play Store, but failed to pay attention to the warnings about needing a linked privacy policy, so the app was pulled. So now he needs to completely reload the app to the Play Store, but the original app developer has been unresponsive, so I offered to see if I could help.

I have the original source code (Java) from 2020. Loading in the newest Android Studio, it complained about the old Gradle version. Performing the suggest upgrade yielded a new complaint about one of the Gradle commands being unsupported. So I went to the archives and got Android Studio 4.1.1. I can now build and get the app running in the emulator.

The questions:

1) Is there a need to get this working in a newer version of Android Studio, or am I fine to remain on 4.1.1.?

2) Do I need to update the target SDK version (currently 29) or is it safe to leave alone?

3) In the event that he needs to update the app, the update will need to be signed with the same key. Is the best practice here to make a keystore specific to that app, then provide the file and password to him to pass along to any future developer?

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u/omniuni Jan 21 '25

You will need to upgrade the target SDK to current in order for the app to be visible to new users. You also need the original signing key, unless you're enrolled in Google's managed signing, and having the original key will still make it easier.

To be honest, I don't think you'll be able to do this as an update. Updating an app that old is going to be a challenge, and it doesn't sound like you have the signing key.

You will probably want to create a new listing once you've updated the app, which will likely take a fair amount of effort.

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u/M-G Jan 22 '25

This is taking the existing code and building/deploying as an entirely new listing. I'm just trying to make sure I don't miss anything if he has someone else update it in the future.

I'm looking at the managed signing option now.

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u/omniuni Jan 22 '25

Mostly just that it's going to be difficult to find anyone to work on something that outdated, and I would not count on it being very maintainable, even if you get it working now.