Question

I am building an Android app in Eclipse and have two similar apps based on the same code base, a ‘London’ one and a ‘UK’ one. To build each app, I just re-name the main package and change a static int in the Application class. The app uses the value of this int to display the right UI, restrict user behaviour, etc.

I have two icon files, one for each app:

• res/drawable-hdpi/icon_london.png
• res/drawable-hdpi/icon_uk.png

Is there any way to conditionally use the correct icon file for the Application and Activities depending upon some sort of project configuration setting? Otherwise, the project maintenance is increased as I would have to change my manifest each time the code base changes, e.g.

<application
    android:icon="@drawable/icon_london"
    ...
    >

    <activity
        android:name="com.company.MainActivity" 
        android:logo="@drawable/icon_london"
        >
    </activity>

…and so on, for all the activities.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue, and ended up in building my custon Ant script to build the apps. You can run macros or Regular Expressions to assign one resource or another.

EDIT:

First, add build.xml to the project:

Open up a command prompt and navigate to the directory of your project:

android update project --path

Then, you can override the existing build.xml, for something like the following.

NOTE: This Ant script is just an example, I have not tested it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="Example" default="help">
    <property file="local.properties" />
    <property file="ant.properties" />

    <loadproperties srcFile="project.properties" />

    <!-- quick check on sdk.dir -->
    <fail
            message="sdk.dir is missing. Make sure to generate local.properties using 'android update project' or to inject it through an env var"
            unless="sdk.dir"/>

    <!-- IMPORT ANT?S BUILD.XML -->
    <import file="${sdk.dir}/tools/ant/build.xml" />

    <property name="app.icon"       value="${icon}" />
    <property name="icon.file"      location="res/drawable/icon.png" />

    <target name="test-release">
      <antcall target="test-pre-release" />
      <antcall target="release" />
    </target>

    <target name="test-pre-release">
      <copy file="${app.icon}" tofile="${icon.file}" overwrite="true"/>
    </target>

</project>

Then, to build this project with a custom icon, open up the command prompt and go to the project directory:

CALL ant -f build.xml test-release -Dicon=path/to/your/icon.png

As said, this is a very basic example. To build a good script, you’ll have to learn a bit of Ant syntax, but it’s not difficult.