Making Backgrounds Repeat in Android

Today, I was working with a layout that I wanted to have a background image repeat throughout the width and height of a Linear Layout.

My First Attempt

Initially it seemed to make sense to create a new layout, place the image into the drawable, resource directory, and reference this as the android:background attribute of the LinearLayout definition

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="@drawable/honeycomb"/>

As you can see from the screenshot that what I had assumed did not automatically tile or repeat the background, rather it stretched the image the full dimensions of the container.

Second Attempt

After some digging on the internet. I found that you can create a drawable in xml, using a resource of an image drawable, in my case the honeycomb. In the drawable you can tell it that it should tile and repeat as needed.

honeycomb_tile.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bitmap
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:src="@drawable/honeycomb"
android:tileMode="repeat" />

layout.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="@drawable/honeycomb_tile"/>

Results: