Writing good commit messages should be an everyday commitment, but it can be sometimes difficult to stay self-disciplined, expecially on your personal project or during rush hours. This behaviour is well represented by xkcd:

Source: http://xkcd.com/1296/

A good solution is to create a default commit message, which will be used every time a commit is supposed to be done. Thanks to this message template you get used to the format and keep a good habit, and the configuration is pretty easy to do.

In some conditions, you may need to publish different APKs for your application that are each targeted to different device configuration. Even if it’s not really recommended, it is possible thanks to the Multiple APK support.

Another cool feature from the Android distribution system is the staged-rollout, recently introduced by Google. The feature is well described on the distribution support website and also on the Android developer website.
Basically it allows to distribute your app to a percentage of users in order to gather possible critical bug reports and reviews before all your user based gets the update pushed on their device, you can slowly increase the percentage of users getting the update when you are more confident with your modifications.

Despite of the detailed documentation, a question raised while working on a Android app didn’t find its answer from the documentation:

If you have 2 APKs, let’s say one for 2 APIs level ranges (eg: API >=17 and < 17). You want to publish an update for the users having a device running on Android API >= 17, and you select a stage rollout distribution for 20% of your user.
On which users group will the percentage be based? All the users having your app (API < 17 and API >= 17) or only the users who have a compatible device (API >= 17)?

Diving into the new (new? well depends on you) Android Gradle build system may be a scary experience when you are used to the good old Eclipse ADT environment.
But really, the Android Gradle system is worth it, it has SO MUCH to give you!

The problem is to find some examples to get started, as Android Gradle is still quite new.

When it comes to User interface prototyping, you will find loads of solutions, some of them web based with limited features, others non-free, etc. None of which I was happy when short on money, or say for an occasional project.

But I have finally found a quite good solution.

Jekyll and so Octopress allow to write your content in Markdown, cool stuff! But for this you need a good Markdown editor.

Getting the working branch name via Gradle can be useful if you want to add this information somewhere in your build, for example in the versionName of your debug Android build by suffixing it.