Back in late-June 2015, Google had announced that they will end official support for the Eclipse ADT by the year end. They advised users to make the move on to Android Studio, which is the official IDE for Android, but Good Guy Google kept supporting ADT for more than a year after that announcement. But alas, the time to pull the trigger has come, as Google has formally announced that official support for the Eclipse ADT, Eclipse ADT plugin and Android Ant Build System on Eclipse has ended.

Google is hoping that the new feature additions in Android Studio 2.2 will help convince developers to make the jump. To recap, here are some of the highlights of the additions:

What happens if you still wish to continue on with Eclipse ADT?

You can, actually. While support for the tools has ended, the tools can still be used by developers who do not wish to make the switch to Android Studio. Android tools inside Eclipse continue to live on in the open source community via the Eclipse's Andmore project.

If you rely on Eclipse for Android development only, we do recommend on making the switch, as Google has shown that it is committed to making Android Studio more feature-rich and accessible to developers. The initial migration may hit your productivity levels, as often happens when you switch over from your preferred IDE to a new one, but the long term benefits are likely to outweigh the short term convenience factors. Android Studio as it currently is, has a lot more polish than when it was released back in 2013, and the path is likely to continue through community involvement in the open source project.

If you need help on Android Studio, Frameworks, IDE's or any other aspect of App Development, do check out our App Development forums.

What are your thoughts on Android Studio? Let us know in the comments below!


Source: Android Developer Blog