How can you obtain debugging info from private beta apps?

Question

I'm developing an app which I will give to a selected number of people prior to publishing on the android market, for them to play with and see if all is well.

If they encounter exceptions, it would normally be raised on the marketplace console, but the app will not come from the market place, I will send them the APK manually.

My question is, if they encounter exceptions, or I decide I'll stick a load of debugging in so I can work out what they're doing (which activities they access, what input params they use etc), how can I feed that information back to myself for analysis?

First glance idea :

• Write all output to a log, then email that log back to myself when they exit application

This does rely on them actually sending it, and sounds incredibly cowboy, surely there is an easier way of getting a view on how they use it? (exceptions and general usage)

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can use Acra library which provides exception handling. You can configure it out of the box to log all exceptions to Google docs spreadsheet file or to your custom script. Lib will do everything for you (like saving log to send only when connection is available).

Answer 2

Try out Zubhium , perfect solution for android beta distribution. From this platform , you can distribute betas, then track who downloaded, when downloaded and by integrating ZubhiumSDK, you can track crash reports during beta usage yet very powerful.