Android Development Environment Setup

This post is for new Android Developers or for those who have little interest in android development and wanna see the android li’l closely J

Here are the crisp steps to setup the android development environment!!

The developers are able to setup Android development environment by using Netbeans or Eclipse IDE and also by using command line tools (Apache Ant). But, Eclipse IDE is the Android development environment recommended by Google. The Android Development Tools (ADT) is a plugin for the Eclipse IDE designed to give a powerful, integrated environment to build Android applications.

Android ADT plugin extends the functionalities of Eclipse and set up the Android projects quickly and create application UI, add components based on the Android Framework API, debug application using DDMS tool and export the apk (Android Package) file to the emulator.

Android Development Environment Set up Using Eclipse

a)    Install JDK: Download and install JDK 5 or JDK 6 from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads.

b)    Install Eclipse IDE: Download Eclipse Classic 3.5.1(or higher) https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and unzip it into the disk (in any folder).

c)    Download ADT Plugin: Download the latest version of Android ADT plugin for Eclipse http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html and save it as a zip file into the disk (in any folder).

d)    Download Android SDK starter package: Download the Android SDK pack .zip archive according to the operating system of development computer (Windows/Linux i386/Mac OS X) http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and unpack it into the disk (in any folder). By default, the SDK files are unpacked into a directory named android-sdk-<machine-platform>.

e)    Configure ADT plugin with Eclipse:  Android offers a custom plugin for the Eclipse IDE, Android Development Tools (ADT).  Following the steps to configure it with the Eclipse.

·         Select Eclipse->Help->Install New Software, in the available dialog Select Add and enter the name of plugin (ex: “Android Plugin”) in the Name field and locate the ADT plugin zip file after selecting on Archive.

·         Select the checkbox next to Developer Tools, which will automatically select the nested tools Android DDMS and Android Development Tools and then click Next.

·         On the next dialog, click Next to read and accept the license agreement and install any dependencies, then click Finish.

·         Restart Eclipse.

f)    Configure Android SDK Starter Package: Select Eclipse->Window->Preferences, in the available dialog, select Android from the left panel and in the right panel of the dialog, click on Browse to locate the Android SDK root directory named as android-sdk-<machine-platform> and click on Apply and OK.

g)    Adding SDK Platforms for different Android OS versions and samples: Select Eclipse->Window->Android SDK and AVD Manager. Now in available dialog, select Available Packages and install the latest version of the SDK.

Exploring the SDK directory (optional): On exploring the SDK directory, the contents inside the root directory are add-on/, docs/, platform-tools/, platforms/, samples/, tools/, SDK Readme.txt, SDkManager.txt

Enjoy coding for android :)