The newest version of Android getting an unexpected preview yesterday has assaulted the Android world with feature after feature, reveal after reveal and change after change thus far. Sadly, those wishing to experience the new changes, Nexus device in hand, will have to sacrifice stability to do so, for now. The list of known issues is pretty long and there are sure to be more bugs hiding in various places around the OS. Naturally, it’s a sad reality of any beta release, especially a full operating system, that there will be a huge amount of bugs. To aid in that reality being done away with and Android N becoming as stable as Marshmallow, Google has unleashed a preview of Android Studio 2.1.
The preview is available on the “canary” channel, denoting that it’s mostly only useful for the most dedicated developers and early adopters at the moment. Some of the new features that the newest version of the studio boasts are support for the new Jack compiler present in Android N, as well as improved support for Java 8. The new studio also comes with the new Android Emulator 2.0, which boasts the best support available for Android N at the moment. On the canary channel, the studio and emulator will both be receiving updates hot off the presses as they’re coded, similar to nightly builds of a Github project or custom ROM for an Android device.
As with any other developer release, of course, there are some bugs. Google lists some known issues for the studio on the download page, along with a link to the full list of known issues. Among them, one of the big ones is incompatibility between a number of tools and the new Jack compiler, mainly those that read .class files. The Instant Run tool is also incompatible with the Jack compiler, for the time being. Native debugging, with the LLBB tool, is also a no go at the moment, with or without the Jack compiler, on Android N. Issues with the SDK manager, input locking up on Linux and many other issues also mar the preview. Regardless, if you’re a particularly brave developer, check out the full announcement and download by heading through the source link.