08 Jan 2014
Building Android with Ant on the Command Line

Every Android developer has to build his project on the command line at some point. Building with Ant is very basic: in a single command you can build your project, run it through Proguard, and sign it with the keystore of your choice.

Prerequisites

Prep Libraries

Each library project that your app relies on must contain a build.xml. Without this your build will fail with the following:

BUILD FAILED
<path-to-your-project>/build.xml:110: The following error occurred while executing this line:
<path-to-your-project>/build.xml:41: The following error occurred while executing this line:
<path-to-your-android-sdk>/tools/ant/build.xml:515: Invalid file: <path-to-dependent-library-project>/build.xml

The fix is simple: cd into the library project and run the following:

android update lib-project

Note: The android executable is in your android-sdk/tools directory, which should be on your path. If you need to set this up, there are plenty of tutorials.

Keystore

Before you can build with Ant you will need to know what keystore you want to use. By default your keystore will be located in your user’s home directory:

~/.android/debug.keystore

If you are part of a team of developers building the app, chances are you will have a shared keystore. If not, you can create one:

keytool -genkey -v -keystore debug.keystore -storepass android -alias androiddebugkey -keypass android -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Build!

Debug

Running the debug task will not execute Progaurd.

ant clean debug \
-Dsdk.dir=<PATH-TO-ANDROID-SDK> \
-Dkey.store=<PATH-TO-KEYSTORE>

Release

Running the release task will execute proguard if it is enabled.

ant clean release \
-Dsdk.dir=<PATH-TO-ANDROID-SDK> \
-Dkey.store=<PATH-TO-KEYSTORE> \
-Dkey.alias="<ALIAS>" \
-Dkey.store.password=<STORE-PASSWORD> \
-Dkey.alias.password=<ALIAS-PASSWORD>

08 Jan 2014 Building Android with Ant on the Command Line