Debugging tools

Debugging tools are some of the tools that no developer can live without. With embedded systems such as Android systems they are even more important. Android provides lots of debugging tools to facilitate complex or boring tasks. The two most important tools are definitely adb and fastboot.

Introducing ADB

ADB stands for Android Debug Bridge and it's a toolkit made of two crucial parts:

• Adb server running on the device

• Adb client running on the PC

Usually, adb is considered a command-line tool, but you can find a few graphical frontends online if you prefer to use it in a more graphical way. Android Studio, the official IDE by Google for Android development, uses adb to communicate with every device and provide cool tools such as Android Device Monitor. Using the graphical interface, we can analyze logs coming from the device or even take a screenshot for debugging purposes.

The following screenshot shows how the Android Device Monitor can be used to retrieve huge amounts of information...