Android SDK sucks. It takes forever to build and run the code on your device/emulator. Especially when you are tuning your UI design, usually it only changes single line of code, but it takes forever waiting the application to run.

LayoutCast is a little tool to help with that, it will cast every changes in your /res (including library project) to your phone within 5 sec, and does not restart the hold application.

Youtube demo video: https://youtu.be/1VmfPQmV8mc

优酷: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMwMTk2OTk0OA

• Fast cast resources changes, usually less than 5 sec.

• Cast layout, drawable, values (basically res/**) to the running application without restart the hole application.

• Support both eclipse and AndroidStudio project.

• Provide a AndroidStudio plugin to click and cast.

• Easy to setup, only add few lines of code.

NOTICE: LayoutCast only support Mac now.

If you have already done that, you can skip this step.

Install the IntelliJ plugin in your AndroidStudio by downloading https://github.com/mmin18/LayoutCast/raw/master/ide/IDEAPlugin/IDEAPlugin.jar and install plugin in Preferences > Plugins > Install plugin from disk...

After restart, you should find a button at right of the run section:

Next you need to setup your project. Add the dependency in your build.gradle:

dependencies {
	compile 'com.github.mmin18.layoutcast:library:1.+@aar'
	...
}

Add the following code in your application onCreate(). And since LayoutCast is only necessary when you develop, you should always check if the BuildConfig.DEBUG == true.

public class MyApplication extends Application {
	@Override
	public void onCreate() {
		super.onCreate();

		if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) {
			LayoutCast.init(this);
		}
	}
}

Also don't forget to check if this Application class is registered in AndroidManifest.xml:

<application
    android:name=".MyApplication"
	...

And make sure you have the network permission in your AndroidManifest.xml:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

You need to run the application first, then make some changes in /res folder.

Click the LayoutCast button in toolbar (on the right of Run button) or go to menu Tools> Layout Cast.

It will show the result above status bar:

I haven't write the Eclipse plugin yet, so if you need to use it on a eclipse project, you need to use the command line.

It's a python 2.7 script which you can get here https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mmin18/LayoutCast/master/cast.py. You can put it in project root dir or anywhere you like.

Since it does not build with gradle, you need to manually download the library https://github.com/mmin18/LayoutCast/raw/master/libs/lcast.jar to your /libs folder.

Everything else is the same as AndroidStudio.

Run the application first, and open terminal and execute python cast.py under your project's folder:

cd <project path>
python cast.py

Or you can specify the path in args:

python cast.py <project path>

When LayoutCast.init(context);, the application start a tiny http server in the background, and receives some certain commands.

The cast script running on your computer communicates with the apps running on your phone through ADB TCP forward.

When the cast script runs, it scans all possible ports on your phone to find the running LayoutCast server, and get the running application's resource list with its id, in which is compiled to public.xml that will be used later to keep resource id index consistent with the running application.

It than scans your project folder to find the /res folder, and all dependencies's /res folder. Run the aapt command to package all resources into res.zip, and then upload the zip file to the LayoutCast server to replace the resources of the running process. Then it calls the Activity.recreate() to restart the visible activity.

Usually the activity will keep its running state in onSaveInstanceState() and restores when it come back later.

• It does not cast java code changes

• It can only find /res folder under /res or /src/main/res

• You can add new or replace resources, but you can't delete or rename resources (for now)