Creating New Android 4.x Projects in AndroidStudio 1.1.0

Posted by Ionoclast Brigham on March 27, 2015
Posted in: Programming. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

Some of you may have noticed that AndroidStudio really wants you to develop for Lollipop–so much so that if you try to create a new project for any of the 4.x versions, it will be broken out of the box. Now, I’m not sure how widespread this problem is, so as a disclaimer, I’ll say I have this problem every time, with the most up-to-date version of AndroidStudio from the Beta channel, on my machine. Here’s some relevant system configuration data:

  • Mac OS X 10.8.5
  • AndroidStudio 1.1.0
  • javac 1.6.0_65
  • Android SDK Build Tools 21.1.2 (with a few older versions still installed)
AndroidStudio 1.1.0

AndroidStudio 1.1.0

The problem arrises when I go to create a new project for ICS 4.0.3 (API level 15). I select a Blank Activity, which is just about the simplest project template possible, and complete the setup. Without any after-the-fact changes on my part, this project will fail to build, citing numerous issues. Here’s what I have to do (every time I start a project) to get the thing building:

  1. Project Structure / Module Settings (select app node, CMD+DownArrow):
    1. Properties Tab
      • Set correct compile SDK
      • Set source and target compatibility to 1.6
    2. Flavors Tab
      • Set min and target SDK versions to appropriate values
    3. Dependencies Tab
      • Delete the entry for the android compatibility library it tries to foist on you
  2. manifests/AndroidManifest.xml:
    • Delete the "android:theme" attribute from <application> tag
  3. res:
    • Delete values/styles.xml
    • Rename <item> attrib "app:showAsAction" => "android:showAsAction" in all your menu/menu_xxx.xml files
  4. FooActivity.java:
    • Make all your Activities extend Activity rather than ActionBarActivity (which is from the compat library)
  5. Rebuild Your Project
  6. Run, Confirm You See “Hello World”
  7. Done!

Hope someone else finds this useful. If you can shed some light on this issue or know a more permanent workaround, I’d love to hear about it in the comments or on Twitter.

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