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Creating a HelloWorld Android App for Amazon Fire Phone

I've tried creating a sample project for Amazon Fire Phone and found a few issues and workarounds. I thought it might be helpful to share them here. It might be useful to Android developers getting started with Amazon Fire Phone programming.

I've followed steps on setting up development environment provided by the Amazon site. Once I've got an Amazon Fire Phone SDK Addon installed, I've created a sample app in Android Studio v1.3.2. In this example, I am using buildToolsVersion "23.0.0"

Here are the steps for creating a new project:

Android Studio v1.3.2.
- File > New > New Project
   - Application Name: HelloWorld
   - Company Domain: practice.mdzyuba.com
   - Next
- Check on Phone and Tablet box
   - Select Minimum SDK: API 17: Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)
   - Next
- Select a Blank Activity to be added
   - Next
- Finish

The projects has failed to compile and I've got a few errors:

/Users/mykola/Code/practice/android_practice/amazon/HelloWorld/app/build/intermediates/exploded-aar/com.android.support/appcompat-v7/23.0.0/res/values-v23/values-v23.xml
Error:(2) Error retrieving parent for item: No resource found that matches the given name 'android:TextAppearance.Material.Widget.Button.Inverse'.
Error:(2) Error retrieving parent for item: No resource found that matches the given name 'android:Widget.Material.Button.Colored'.

It looks like an Android Studio issue https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=183478.

A workaround is to change or comment out the com.android.support:appcompat dependency in build.gradle:

app/build.gradle:

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

 android {
    compileSdkVersion 22
    buildToolsVersion "23.0.0"

     defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.mdzyuba.practice.sample1"
        minSdkVersion 17
        targetSdkVersion 17
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"
    }
    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
}

 dependencies {
    compile fileTree(include: ['*.jar'], dir: 'libs')
//    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:23.0.0'
    compile "com.android.support:appcompat-v7:22.+"
}

After that, the project build is successful.

Next, I change the gradle version as suggested by the Amazon instructions:

build.gradle:
   dependencies {
//        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:1.3.0'
        classpath 'com.amazon.device.tools.build:gradle:1.1.+'

Now, I've got an error: 

Error:Gradle 2.4 requires Android Gradle plugin 1.2.0 (or newer)  but project is using version 1.1.3.
Please use Android Gradle plugin 1.2.0 or newer.
Fix plugin version and sync project

I've modified Project Structure > Project > Gradle version: 2.2.1. I've got this version from the Amazon examples. After that, I've got a few more errors

.../Sample1/app/build/intermediates/exploded-aar/com.android.support/appcompat-v7/22.2.1/res/values-v21/values-v21.xml
Error:(2) Error retrieving parent for item: No resource found that matches the given name 'android:TextAppearance.Material'.

So, I've decided to comment out com.android.support:appcompat dependency completely:

app/build.gradle:

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(include: ['*.jar'], dir: 'libs')
//    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:23.0.0'
//    compile "com.android.support:appcompat-v7:22.+"
}

Now, I am getting a style error:

.../Sample1/app/src/main/res/values/styles.xml
Error:(2) Error retrieving parent for item: No resource found that matches the given name 'Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar'.

Since there is no appcompat dependency, I've modified AppTheme in styles.xml to have a theme provided by the Android SDK:
   
Next error:
  
.../Sample1/app/src/main/res/menu/menu_main.xml
Error:(5) No resource identifier found for attribute 'showAsAction' in package 'com.mdzyuba.practice.sample1'

I just removed app:showAsAction="never"  attribute from the menu item element:


< item android:id="@+id/action_settings" android:title="@string/action_settings"

        android:orderInCategory="100" >


Next, I've got following errors:
.../Sample1/app/src/main/java/com/mdzyuba/practice/sample1/MainActivity.java
Error:(3, 30) error: package android.support.v7.app does not exist
Error:(8, 35) error: cannot find symbol class AppCompatActivity
Error:(10, 5) error: method does not override or implement a method from a supertype
Error:(12, 9) error: cannot find symbol variable super
Error:(13, 9) error: cannot find symbol method setContentView(int)
Error:(16, 5) error: method does not override or implement a method from a supertype
Error:(19, 9) error: cannot find symbol method getMenuInflater()

I've removed a dependency on the support lib in MainActivity class:

// import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

Finally, good news: BUILD SUCCESSFUL :)

Running the app:


Hope it might be helpful and save time to anybody else who is creating apps for Amazon Phone with Android Studio.
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