Google has announced the end of all Eclipse-based tooling for Android development by the end of the year.
When Android Studio reached version 1.0, Google declared it the official Android development tool, suggesting developers to switch to it. Those who have not done it so far, now have serious reasons to do it because Google has announced the termination of development and support of Android tools in Eclipse at the end of 2015. This includes the ADT plug-in, the Ant build system, DDMS, Traceview, and the rest of performance and monitoring tools.
To make the switch from Eclipse to Android Studio, it is recommended to read the migration guide to understand the new project structure and how Gradle works for building Android projects. After the prerequisites are met, Eclipse-based projects can be imported with Studio, followed by a validation (build and run) to make sure everything is all right. If there are problems, Google recommends tweaking the Eclipse ADT project and importing again.
Those still wanting to stay with Eclipse are recommended to follow and contribute to the Andmore project, an attempt to continue the presence of Android tooling in Eclipse. Andmore includes JDT, CDT, ADT, it supports Maven and Ant, it has plans for Gradle support, and is integrated with Mylyn, EGit and GitHub.
Google is known for starting many projects, announcing many bold initiatives, but then easily killing a project that turns out as being not viable, as it was the case with Reader, Wave, Buzz, Knol, Code, Dart Editor, or Chrome Dev Editor, to name a few. Their approach is quite different from that of many software developers who tend to artificially keep alive a project that has not got traction. While Google’s flexibility seems to be woven into the company’s DNA and provides a level of agility, some in the development community are not confortable with this approach. We’ve seen numerous comments from developers reluctant to join new projects from Google being afraid these will be terminated after a while, slowing down the adoption of such projects. Should Google change their approach or developers become more flexible?
