droid-cli

Droid CLI

A powerful, interactive CLI tool for Android development that brings the essential features of Android Studio to your terminal. Inspired by Expo CLI, this tool provides fast incremental builds, device management, and debugging without the heavy GUI overhead.

Features

• 🔨 Incremental Builds - Fast builds using Gradle's build cache
• 📱 Device Management - Easy selection and management of emulators and physical devices
• 🚀 Smart Emulator Startup - Automatically offers to start emulators when no devices connected
• 📋 Logcat Integration - Spawns terminal with filtered app logs
• ⚙️ Gradle Tasks - Run common tasks like clean, sync, and custom tasks
• 🎯 Interactive Menu - User-friendly menu system for all operations
• 🛠️ Configuration - Project-specific settings via droid-cli.json
• 🔄 Auto-detection - Automatically detects Android projects and devices

Installation

npm install -g droid-cli

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 14.0.0
• Android SDK with ADB in PATH
• Java Development Kit (JDK)
• An Android project with Gradle wrapper

Quick Start

• Navigate to your Android project directory
• Initialize the CLI configuration:

  droid-cli init
  

• Start the interactive menu:

  droid-cli
  

Commands

Global Options

All commands support the --project (or -p) flag to specify the Android project directory:

droid-cli --project /path/to/android/project [command]

This allows you to run the CLI from anywhere while targeting a specific project.

Interactive Mode

droid-cli [--project <path>]

Launches the main interactive menu with all available options.

Direct Commands

Build & Run

droid-cli build [--variant debug|release] [--device device-id] [--project <path>]

Builds the app and deploys it to the selected device.

Device Management

droid-cli device [--project <path>]

List and select target devices/emulators.

Logcat

droid-cli logcat [--device device-id] [--project <path>]

Opens logcat in a new terminal window, filtered for your app.

Gradle Tasks

droid-cli gradle <task> [--args "additional arguments"] [--project <path>]

Run any Gradle task with optional arguments.

Initialize Configuration

droid-cli init [--project <path>]

Set up or reconfigure the CLI for your project.

Build Variant Selection

droid-cli variant [--project <path>]

Select the default build variant (debug/release) for the project.

Configuration

The CLI uses an droid-cli.json file in your project root for configuration:

{
  "projectPath": "./app",
  "defaultVariant": "debug",
  "terminal": "auto",
  "gradleTasks": {
    "custom": ["myCustomTask"]
  },
  "buildCache": {
    "enabled": true,
    "maxSize": "1GB"
  },
  "logcat": {
    "clearOnStart": true,
    "colorize": true
  },
  "adbReverse": {
    "enabled": false,
    "ports": [8081]
  },
  "selectedDevice": "emulator-5554"
}

Configuration Options

• projectPath - Path to your Android project directory
• defaultVariant - Default build variant (debug/release)
• terminal - Terminal to use for logcat (auto/iterm2/terminal/gnome-terminal/etc.)
• gradleTasks.custom - Array of custom Gradle tasks to show in menu
• buildCache.enabled - Enable Gradle build cache for faster builds
• buildCache.maxSize - Maximum cache size
• logcat.clearOnStart - Clear logcat before starting new session
• logcat.colorize - Enable colored logcat output
• adbReverse.enabled - Automatically run adb reverse for React Native development
• adbReverse.ports - Ports to forward from device to host (e.g., [8081] for Metro bundler)
• selectedDevice - Last selected device (auto-saved)

CI/CD Integration

# In your CI script
droid-cli gradle clean
droid-cli gradle assembleRelease

Team Development

Share the droid-cli.json configuration with your team for consistent build settings.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Roadmap

• Hot reload support
• Multiple app module support
• Wireless debugging integration
• Build performance profiling
• Plugin system
• VS Code extension
• Windows PowerShell support
• Docker container builds