Keeping up to Date with the Support Library

Posted by Agustin Fonts, Product Manager, Android Support Library


It's important to keep current when you're dealing with technology. That’s why we're constantly working to improve the quality of our software, particularly libraries that are linked into your apps, such as the Support Library.  The Support Library is a suite of libraries that provides backward compatibility along with additional features across many Android releases.

We have just released version 25.2 of the Support Library.  If you're making use of the android.support.v7.media.MediaRouter class in revision 25.1.1 or 25.1.0, we strongly recommend that you update due to a known issue.  If you haven't updated recently, you've missed out on some great bug fixes such as these:

25.2:

• 
  Corrected a severe mediarouter issue in which using an A2DP Bluetooth device and media routing APIs could cause the device to become unresponsive, requiring a reboot


• 
  Showing a slide presentation with screen mirroring no longer causes the device to disconnect from Wi-Fi


• 
  Media button now properly handles media apps that did not register themselves with setMediaButtonReceiver()


• 
  TextInputLayout correctly overlays hint and text if text is set by XML (AOSP issue 230171)


• 
  Corrected a memory leak in MediaControllerCompat (AOSP issue 231441)


• 
  RecyclerView no longer crashes when recycling view holders (AOSP issue 225762)

Reporting (and fixing) a Bug

The Support Library is developed by the Android Framework and Developer Relations teams, and, just like the Android platform, you can file bugs using the AOSP issue tracker, or submit fixes to our Git repository. Your feedback is critical in helping us to make the Support Library the most productive environment to use for developing Android applications.

Publish your app with confidence from the Google Play Developer Console

Posted by Kobi Glick, Product Manager, Google Play



Publishing a new app, or app update, is an important and exciting milestone for
every developer. In order to make the process smoother and more trackable, we're
announcing the launch of a new way to publish apps on Google Play with some new
features. The changes will give you the ability to manage your app releases with
more confidence via a new manage releases page in the Google Play Developer Console.

Manage your app updates with clarity and control

The new manage releases page is where you upload alpha, beta, and production
releases of your app. From here, you can see important information and the
status of all your releases across tracks.

The new manage releases page.

Easier access to existing and new publishing
features

Publishing an app or update is a big step, and one that every developer wants to
have confidence in taking. To help, we've added two new features.

First, we've added a validation step that highlights potential issues before you
publish. The new "review and rollout" page will appear before you confirm the
roll out of a new app and flag if there are validation errors or warnings. This
new flow will make the app release process easier, especially for apps using
multi-APK. It also provides new information; for example, in cases where you
added new permissions to your app, the system will highlight it.

Second, it's now simpler to perform and track staged roll-outs during the
publishing flow. With staged rollouts, you can release your update to a growing
% of users, giving you a chance to catch and address any issues before affecting
your whole audience.




If you want to review the history of your releases, it is now possible to track
them granularly and download previous APKs.




Finally we've added a new artifacts library under manage releases where you can
find all the files that help you manage a release.

Start using the new manage releases page today

You can access the new manage releases page in the Developer Console. Visit the
Google
Play Developer Help Center for more information. With these changes, we're
helping you to publish, track and manage your app with confidence on Google
Play.

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