What Is A Practical Way To Install Stable And Development App Versions Simultaneously?

I want to keep a stable version of my app on my phone, and continue developing... which would put the app on the phone twice, if there's a practical way to do that. A search led t

Solution 1:

you can add to your buildTypes{ }

debug {
        versionNameSuffix "-DEBUG"
        applicationIdSuffix ".debug"
    }

Solution 2:

Check out gradle's product flavors. You could use a different package name in two different flavors, and then be able to install both flavors on your phone at once. Note: changing package names in this way may force other tweaks (e.g., if you use a Google API key for maps, you may have to allow both package names to use the generated key explicitly).

You should be able to do this same package renaming within the existing debug and release build types, but I get the sense you want both stable and cutting-edge builds to be debug variants.

Tweaked code example from the docs linked:

productFlavors {
    flavor1 {
        packageName "com.example.flavor1"
    }

    flavor2 {
        packageName "com.example.flavor2"
    }
}

If you go this route, be sure to read the "Build Type + Product Flavor = Build Variant" section of the linked docs too. Other gradle stuff you should read up on for a complete picture: applicationId, packageNameSuffix, applicationIdSuffix.