Pelgrims K. - Gradle for Android

Kevin Pelgrims started his career as a .NET developer in Belgium. After some years working on Windows and web development for corporate clients, he moved to Copenhagen to become part of its start-up community. There, he began working on mobile platforms, and within a year, he was the lead developer of several Android and Windows Phone apps. Kevin is also a regular speaker at the Android developers group in Copenhagen. He maintains multiple Android apps in his spare time and likes to experiment with server-side technology. When he is not busy writing code, he is most likely playing the guitar with his wife and their cat.

To follow what Kevin is up to, you can take a look at his blog at http://www.kevinpelgrims.com or follow him on Twitter at @kevinpelgrims.

I could not have written this book without the support of my brilliant wife, Louise. Not only did she put up with me spending entire evenings and weekends with my computer, she also proofread the entire book, improving the language and the grammar.

I would like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to write this book, especially Nikhil Karkal and Prachi Bisht, for believing in me and guiding me throughout the process. I appreciate the help of my friend Koen Metsu, whose comments helped in making sure that the explanations and examples are easy to understand. Thanks to Anders Bo Pedersen and Emanuele Zattin for coming up with several improvements.

I also want to thank the reviewers: Hugo Visser, Peter Friese, Felix Schulze, Takuya Miyamoto, Jonathan H. Kau, and Marco Rodriguez-Suarez. Their input has significantly improved the content of this book. Last but not least, special thanks to our cat, Jigsaw, who encouraged me to stay focused and keep going, by sitting on my lap so I couldn't get up.

Peter Friese works as a developer advocate at Google in the Developer Relations team in London, UK. He is a regular open source contributor, blogger, and public speaker. He is on Twitter at @peterfriese and on Google+ at +PeterFriese. You can find his blog at http://www.peterfriese.de.

Jonathan H. Kau is an experienced Android developer, having published several standalone applications to Google Play and worked on numerous hackathon projects leveraging Android.

In the past, he has worked on the mobile team at Yelp and as a contractor for Propeller Labs. Jonathan is currently working in the engineering team at Shyp, both on the Android application and the corresponding backend API.

I'd like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to review this educational book that will hopefully simplify the use of Gradle for many developers.

Takuya Miyamoto is a full-stack developer with 6 years of experience in designing, implementing, and maintaining various types of web services and APIs such as e-commerce and SNS. He also has some experience as an Android developer. He has worked as a senior engineer in an enterprise, as a lead engineer in start-ups, and is currently working as an individual developer.

Marco A. Rodriguez-Suarez is the head of mobile at Snapwire, a collaborative platform and marketplace that connects photographers with brands and businesses around the world. Prior to that, he worked in mobile consulting on diverse projects, ranging from topics such as video streaming to game emulation. He has been working with Android since the release of the first public device in 2008 and has been hooked on mobile development ever since. He is passionate about build systems and has extensive experience with Gradle, Maven, and Ant. Marco received his master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Felix Schulze is leading the mobile software development department at AutoScout24 and is responsible for the Android and iOS development. He also gives a lot of talks about continuous integration in app development and contributes to open source tools. His Twitter handle is @x2on; you can also check out his website at www.felixschulze.de.

Hugo Visser has many years of experience as a software engineer, ranging from server-side to desktop and from web to mobile. Since the original announcement, he has closely followed the development of the Android platform, which resulted in his first app in 2009, Rainy Days , which has since been downloaded over 1,000,000 times worldwide.

He runs his own company, Little Robots, which focuses on apps and other clever uses of the Android platform. He has been named the Google Developer Expert for Android by Google and is an organizer of The Dutch Android User Group, which is a community in the Netherlands where Android professionals can meet and share knowledge with each other during monthly meetings.

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