How To Create Your Android Development Environment

This post is also available in: Polish

Hello and welcome to my first article about Android development. Today I cover some tips about installing and configuring Android IDE, which is Eclipse and Android SDK, so it works nice and quick enough on Windows platform.

These are requirements for hardware, so your IDE would work fast enough and stable:

• minimum 3 GB of RAM
• minimum 2 GHz processor
• about 2,7 GB of free disk space
• good internet connection

1. Installing JavaJDK 5+ is required to work with Android SDK. You can download te latest JDK SE from here.To check Java version you have already installed use this command:>java –version

   

   If you see something similar to 1.6.xxx than skip to next step.

2. Installing EclipseThis is not obvious to choose the right Eclipse version that works best with Android SDK. Some would run fast, others wouldn’t start in hours.From my experience using EasyEclipse for Android development is insanity. Android emulator will start never. And on Eclipse Classic edition it goes in few minutes. And once you start Android emulator you can run your app without restarting the emulator so it goes fast enough.At least Eclipse Classic 3.3.1 is required, you can get it from here.
3. Installing Android SDKIf you reached this point that means it’s a halfway to your Android heaven. Next, you will get Android SDK and download all packages for it.First, download your SDK from here. I recommend you to use the zip version. It worked fine for me. After you download the file, unpack it to folder, something clear, like C:\Android or similar.Next, run SDKManager.exe from that folder.

   Android Manager will scan for installed and available packages and show you what you can install, including all Android versions and documentations for them. I recommend you to install them all. You might need them when you would need to test you applications on different environment versions. It would take few minutes. Choose Accept All option so it goes faster.
   When done, click on Installed packages menu option. You should see something like that:

   

   And under Available packages menu options should be an empty list.

4. Android Development ToolkitNow, you need to install Eclipse plugin to Eclipse IDE that would help a much in Android application development. To install the plugin run your Eclipse Classic and then choose Help –> Install new software menu option. Click Add button and enter URL as follows:On my example it says “Duplicate location” because I have already defined such location. Click OK, Eclipse scans the URL you provided and it shows you packages available under that URL. Choose all of them and click Next. Packages will be then installed on your Eclipse environment. Restart Eclipse when done.
5. Configuring ADT pluginThis is the last thing you need to do before you start creating you first killer Android Application. First, choose Window –> Preferences menu option and click on Android option. Next, click on Browse and select path to your Android SDK folder that you installed in step 3. Then, click Apply, click OK and you are done.

Yupi! You did it

In next part I describe how to create first Hello Android application. See you soon!

1 Comment

• Judy 20 December 2011 at 07:27

  Intelligence and simplicity – easy to unerdstand how you think.

  Reply