JRebel.Android: Runtime Class- and Resource Reloading for Android

Developers writing Android applications suffer from a dreadful redeploy time every time they need to test changes to the source code. While runtime class reloading systems are widely used for the underlying programming language, Java, there is currently no support for reloading code on the Android platform. This paper presents a new tool, JRebel.Android that enables automatic runtime class- and resource reloading capabilities for Android. The target of this paper is the Android developer as well as the researcher for which dynamic updating capabilities on mobile devices can serve as a basic building block within areas such as runtime maintenance or self-adaptive systems. JRebel.Android is able to reload classes in much less than 1 second, saving more than 91% of the total redeploy time for small apps, more than 95% for medium size apps, and even more for larger apps.