Pull files from Android tablet for debugging purposes.

Question

In school (high school), my partner and I are developing an Android tablet application. We were both issued Acer Iconia A500 tablets to use. I need to pull files created by our application on run-time off the device (adb pull), but because they are not rooted, and I wouldn't want to root school property, is there an effective way to remove files from an android device stored in your applications data/data/packagename/ area? We also did try the emulator, but have had numerous different problems with it, and when it does work, it takes about 4-5 minutes to upload an apk to it every time I change code and re-upload it. Any ideas on a good way to get files off a non-rooted device, in this case a database I'm trying to copy from assets, so I can inspect it?

Answer 1

If you have a choice, I'd definitely recommend writing your files to the SD card because that will be a lot easier to view and handle.

If your file must necessarily be written in /data, what you could do is mirror it to the SD card for debugging purposes. So every time you write the file, you also write exactly the same content to the SD card (if the debug flag is on, otherwise no).

If it's a file that is not being created by your code but by other code, what you can do in your app is copy it to the SD card when you detect that it's been changed.

Answer 2

You could use the external storage permission and write to the SD Card instead. Then you can pull them using the regular windows directory when you plug it in. Also, it should not take that long to update your code via the emulator, are you turning the emulator off every time?