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What should you use for Android development; Android Studio or Eclipse?

Published on 07 May 18

Manish Follow

Over the years there has been a lot of debate surrounding the merits and demerits of the two important environments (IDEs), Android Studio and Eclipse IDE. While Studio was specifically built for the purpose of app development, Eclipse IDE is generally more of a shell that is extended through plugins. Both of the IDE’s are more or less similar in functionality and it mainly depends upon the preference of the developer as to with which IDE is more accustomed and comfortable. Continue to read to find some points of comparison suggesting the benefits of each IDE over each other.

Build Tools

Eclipse IDE being the tried and tested technology uses Apache Ant as its main build system which is a very robust XML based build system and is known by Java developers with it and had been using it for a long time.

Android Studio utilizes the fast growing Gradle build system. It builds on top of the concepts of Apache Ant and Apache Maven, but it also introduces a Groovy DSL (Domain-Specific Language) that allows for scripted builds which opens up many automation possibilities like uploading your beta .apk to Testflight for testing.

Performance/Stability

Eclipse is a primarily Java based software, and it is a big one. So, In order to run and operate it in a reliable manner, you are required to have a sizeable amount of RAM along with a good CPU that can provide power to back it up. Therefore, the majority of the developers and users who fail to meet these criteria have had bad experiences using Eclipse.

Having pointed the drawback with Eclipse, is it is also to be kept in mind that Android Studio is still in beta stage and thus it comes with its own bugs from time to time that crash the IDE quite often. However, keeping this drawback in mind, the whole experience still feels faster and more robust.

Project Organization

Both IDEs work in different manner in order to enable you manage your projects. In case you have used or have been using Eclipse then you must be familiar with the concept of workspace as you need to select the workspace when the eclipse starts. This is done so that you can load all the projects of that workspace in your tree navigation. Additionally, if you would required to switch to a different project in new workspace, you have to restart the whole IDE.

Android Studio on the other hand is different and introduces the concept of modules to treat this situation. This means your app could be one module, while the library that you may download could be another module and the AD SDK that you are currently integrating will be the third module. Each such module can basically have their own Gradle build files and further they can declare their own dependencies. Thus when it comes to project organization, Android Studio seems more natural but if you had been using eclipse it can take a little time to get used to Studio.

Some other points of comparison

Working with Eclipse can be difficult at times, probably when debugging and designing layouts Eclipse sometimes get stuck and we have to restart Eclipse from time to time. Android studio on the other hand had been released a while back which means this IDE is not yet heavily used by developers. Therefore, it may contain certain bugs which with passage of time would be easy to handle and would work effectively.
When it comes to features, Eclipse certainly has advantages as it is a widely known, trusted IDE and offers more features then Studio. On the contrary, Android Studio is a little new right now and its upcoming versions may come with features to keep up with Eclipse.

Thus to conclude, it can be stated that both the Android IDEs are more and less give same functionality having their respective merits and demerits. So, when it comes to development, it all boils down to the preference of the android app developers and how they visualize the whole setup accordingly to make the best use of one of the Android IDEs.

This blog is listed under Development & Implementations and Mobility Community

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