Deployment and Testing of Xamarin.Android Apps

This section includes guides that explain how to test an application, optimize its performance, prepare it for release, sign it with a certificate, and publish it to an app store.

Application Package Sizes

This article examines the constituent parts of a Xamarin.Android application package and the associated strategies that can be used for efficient package deployment during debug and release stages of development.

Apply Changes

This guide covers the Apply Changes feature which lets you push resource changes to your running app without restarting your app.

Building Apps

This section describes how the build process works and explains how to build ABI-specific APKs.

Command Line Emulator

This article briefly touches starting the emulator via the command line.

Debugging

The guides in the section help you to debug your app using Android emulators, real Android devices, and the debug log.

Setting the Debuggable Attribute

This article explains how to set the debuggable attribute so that tools such as adb can communicate with the JVM.

Environment

This article describes the Xamarin.Android execution environment and the Android system properties that influence program execution.

GDB

This article explains how to use gdb for debugging a Xamarin.Android application.

Installing a System App

This guide explains how to install a Xamarin.Android app as a System Application on an Android device or as part of a custom ROM.

Linking on Android

This article discusses the linking process used by Xamarin.Android to reduce the final size of an application. It describes the various levels of linking that can be performed and provides some guidance and troubleshooting advice to mitigate errors that might result from using the linker.

Xamarin.Android Performance

There are many techniques for increasing the performance of applications built with Xamarin.Android. Collectively these techniques can greatly reduce the amount of work being performed by a CPU and the amount of memory consumed by an application.

Profiling Android Apps

This guide explains how to use profiler tools to examine the performance and memory usage of an Android app.

Preparing an Application for Release

After an application has been coded and tested, it is necessary to prepare a package for distribution. The first task in preparing this package is to build the application for release, which mainly entails setting some application attributes.

Signing the Android Application Package

Learn how to create an Android signing identity, create a new signing certificate for Android applications, and sign the application with the signing certificate. In addition, this topic explains how to export the app to disk for ad-hoc distribution. The resulting APK can be sideloaded into Android devices without going through an app store.

Publishing an Application

This series of articles explains the steps for public distribution of an application created with Xamarin.Android. Distribution can take place via channels such as e-mail, a private web server, Google Play, or the Amazon App Store for Android.