Question

We’ve built a custom app for a client on android tablet. We need to deploy it to 200+ tablets, is there any ‘deployment’ method which can set the tablet up and automatically install it from the android marketplace (or sideload it)?

Answer 1

Using the adb protocol. You should be able to “just” plugin the tablet via usb and do a:

adb install yourapp.apk

However you will of cause have to plugin each an every tablet and do this, and the app will not be installed from the Android Market. It should however be updateable from the market nonetheless, if you just adb install the same apk as you have submitted to the market.

If you have many devices connected simultaneously, you should be able to deploy your app to all connected devices using e.g. a simple bash script like:

for device in `adb devices | grep -v "List" | sed -e "s/\t.*$//"`;
do
    echo "Installing app to $device";
    adb -s $device install yourapp.apk;
done