Documentation Nearly Unusable

[authorwjf]

Hey Guys. This seems like an awesome project, and something the community really needs. Unfortunately the documentation is such a mess its nearly unusable. I'm a senior developer and have been writing Android code since Cupcake and after nearly 3 hours of trying to run a single trace here I am. The non-rooted version of the APK is not where the docs or the ATT website claim. In fact, I couldn't find a binary of it at all and none of the instructions for installing match up with the MAC bundle you get from the AT&T download page or the GITHUB project. I tried importing the non-root collector project into Eclipse and compiling it. This kind of works. I got an APK. But it lacks any of the local menus the docs describe and it doesn't seem to connect to the ARO host application on my MAC. The only troubleshooting recommended is checking the USB connection, but the docs don't describe how to do this and anyhow this step is listed after instructing downloading the APK via USB to begin with, which I did, so it seems this step really doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, I just wanted to make your team aware of how important the docs really are to everyone who was not a part of putting this project together, and hope you'll spend some time updating them. I know it is easy for documentation to fall by the way side but having consistently incorrect documentation is more frustrating at times than none. At least with no docs I would have spent the last 3 hours poking around in the source instead of trying and failing over and over with the docs.

[dougsillars]

Hi there.

Thank you for the comments on the non-rooted collector documentation. It is updated on the developer.att.com/ARO site, but perhaps not here. If you are just hoping to use ARO - feel free to just download from there. The only difference is branding (we have the globe and AT&T on the version on our website).

The APK that uses ROOT has a UI. the APK for non-root data collection has no UI. The Non-rooted collector is installed by the Analyzer over ADB when you initiate trace collection. The instructions to use the non-rooted collector are here:
http://developer.att.com/application-resource-optimizer/docs#data-collector

All starting and stopping of the non-rooted collector is run from the desktop you are tethered to. (COMING SOON: command line interfaces to automatically start/stop and analyze - we are really excited about that)

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have additional questions.

Doug

[authorwjf]

I appreciate you responding, @dougsillars. I should have some time early next week to look at the docs on the att developer site. I will give it a try and get back to you. In the mean time maybe just pointing devs there from the repo here in the readme for documentation would be a good idea, if the ATT dev site is where the most recent docs will live. Regards!

[authorwjf]

Still no love guys. The documentation at the link above does seem to be much more up to date than that included with the GitHub project but I've tried multiple Android devices and cables and selecting "start data collector" always results in a "No device found" dialog. I have ADB up in a command window and all the devices show up as connected and online. I've attempted to connect with a Moto X running Android 5.1 and a Nexus 7 running 5.0. I am going to try and get a hold of a Nexus 5 tomorrow running 4.4.4 but at this point my expectations aren't high. My host machine is running OSX 10.10.2. Maybe I should try a Win 64 box or something?

[authorwjf]

FYI along the same lines as the title of the issue maybe you could add some trouble shooting steps to the docs for connectivity problems? It's kind of a mystery to me at this point if the ARO host app is using ADB to look for my devices how it is not finding them even though they report fine over ADB. Perhaps there is something more that must be there? Maybe something about my WIFI network is not allowing the VPN to be created and this is part of the initial initialization?

[dougsillars]

Thank you for the great tips. We will definitely work to make the steps to run the non-rooted collector better (and we'll fast track it too!)

So, let's figure out where the issues are... I run traces on my Mac (10.10.2) all the time...

1. in a terminal - 'adb devices' shows your device as connected and online. you say yes here, so my bet is Compile error of FilterApplicationsDialog.java file #2.
2. IN the ARO analyzer: File-> "set adb path" is set correctly. Note - you must include the "adb" at the end of the path
   
3. There is a bug on 5.0.x devices (with the OS) with the VPN. I have a blog post coming out this week on the issue.. but basically, you must turn off the VPN connection on the device before stopping the ARO trace. Otherwise, the ARO command to stop the VPN is not registered on the device - and you must reboot to run additional traces. (This is fixed in Android 5.1 - at least on my Nexus 6.) So - if you reboot your phone - does it work?

My gut is saying #2. But watch out for #3 once you get her up and running.

Doug

[authorwjf]

@dougsillars It looks like #2 was what was giving me grief. Thanks for the quick responses. Is there trick to getting the trace to include the battery data? At the end of my trace it always says I am missing alarm_info_end, batterinfo_dump, dmesg, cpu, appid, processed_events, device_info, and alrarm_info_start. Maybe this additional data is only available from a rooted device?

[weikano]

I'm also facing the problem that once I stop collector , it tells me missing alarm_info_end , batterinfo_dump, dmesg, cpu, appid, processed_events, device_info, and alrarm_info_start .
My device is rooted and running on android 4.4.4

[dougsillars]

It looked like this, correct?

This is typical from the non-rooted collector. We can't get these items without root access.

So - let's try to figure out why you are not getting the rooted collector installed. Do you have a SuperUser app installed?

Doug