How to have both Debug and Release apk on same device?

Question

While continuing to develop my application and test it on a real phone, I need to have the release version of it on the same phone, for demonstration purposes (the release version is much more responsive, thanks to no-logs).

The problem is that the only way to make two applications co-exist on the same device in Android is by having different package names.

But package names require re-factoring and lots of propagating manual fixes... not to mention that this confuses version control...

Ideally, Eclipse+ADT would allow appending a modifier variable that would automatically generate a different package name for debug/release and would allow such co-existence, but I couldn't find any mechanism that allows doing that.

Do you know of any way to workaround this?

Creative solutions and ideas are welcome.

Answer 1

Use Android Studio because gradle make your life a lot easier - just use applicationIdSuffix

android {  
   ...  
   buildTypes {  
     release {...}  
     debug {  
       applicationIdSuffix '.debug' 
     }  
   }  
}

For more go here.