Testing on the host's JVM

We left this subject for the end of this chapter, as it seems this is the Holy Grail of the Android platform.

Android is based on a virtual machine named Dalvik, after a village in Iceland, optimized for mobile resources with limited capabilities such as constrained amount of memory and processor speed. Thus representative of a mobile device but certainly a very different environment than our memory rich and speedy host computers, typically having plenty of memory and processor speed to enjoy.

Ordinarily, we run our applications and tests on an emulator or device. These targets have a much slower real or emulated CPU. Thus, running our tests is a time-consuming activity, mainly when our project starts to grow. Applying Test-driven Development techniques compels us to run hundreds of tests to verify every change we introduced.

Note

It's worth noticing that this technique can be used only as a workaround during the development process to speed things up, and it should...