Version 8.5
Copyright � 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2013 Lars Vogel
04.01.2014
Table of Contents
Google provides tools to develop Android applications. You can choose between Eclipse or IntelliJ based tools.
This guide describes both approaches, but the focus is on the Eclipse based tooling.
Selecting an IDE is primarily based on personal preferences. The team at Google plans to support both the Eclipse as well as the IntelliJ based tools. The author of this text is a long term Eclipse user, contributor and committer and therefore selects Eclipse as his primary tooling for Android development.
Development for Android can be done on a reasonably sized computer. For a nice experience a modern computer is recommended, for example, a 2.6 GHz CPU with at least 8 GB of memory. An SSD speeds up the start of the Android emulator significantly.
The Android SDK is 32-bit, therefore on a 64-bit Linux system you
need
to have the package
ia32-libs
installed. For Ubuntu you can do this via the following command.
# Ubuntu 12.04 apt-get install ia32-libs # Ubuntu 13.04 sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 lib32stdc++6 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 # Ubuntu 13.10 sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 lib32stdc++6 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32z1
Please check your distribution documentation if you are using a different flavor of Linux.
On Ubuntu 13.04 you also have to install the OpenGL support. This can be done on Ubuntu 13.04 via following command.
# install OpenGL support sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev
Please check your distribution documentation if you are using a different flavor of Linux.
Google provides a packaged and configured Android development environment based on the Eclipse IDE called Android Developer Tools. Under the following URL you find an archive file which includes all required tools for Android development: Getting the Android SDK.
Extract the zip file and start the Android Developer Tools (Eclipse)
which are located in the
eclipse
folder.
You can do this by double-clicking on the
eclipse
native launcher (e.g.,
eclipse.exe
under Windows).
See Section 7, “Updating an Eclipse IDE for Android development” for a description on how to update your existing Eclipse IDE to perform Android development.
The
Android SDK Manager
allows you to install specific versions of the
Android API.
Select
→
from the Eclipse menu or use the
tools/android
program from your Android SDK installation.
If you chose the packaged
Android Developer Tools
download based on the
Eclipse IDE, the Android SDK is located in the
sdk
folder of the extracted archive file.
The Android SDK Manager allows you to install and delete Android packages.
Select the version of Android you would like to develop for from the tree and press the button. The following screenshot shows the selection for the API 18 version of Android.
Press the button and accept the license for all packages. After the installation is completed, close the Android SDK Manager and restart the Eclipse IDE.
The support library allows you to use functionality provided by higher Android releases in lower Android versions.
In the Android SDK Manager select Extras and install the Android support library.
Android currently has several versions of the library, the v4, v7 and v13 version which are valid as of the respective API level of Android. For example, the support library v7 works as of Android devices with version API 7. Higher versions of the support library require also the lower versions to work. For example, support library v7 requires the v4 library.
During Android development it is useful to have access to the Android source code.
You can download the Android source code via the Android SDK Manager by selecting the Sources for Android SDK.
The sources are stored in the
path_to_android_sdk/sources/android-xx
directory.
where xx is the API level of
Android, e.g.,
19 for the
Android 4.4
version.
To connect the Android source with the Eclipse IDE, you need first to create an Android project. After you have a project you can assign the source to the JAR file via its properties.
To connect the sources with the
android.jar
file in your Android
project, right-click on your
android.jar
in the
Package Explorer
view
and
select
→ .
Select
External location
and press the
button. Browse to the
path_to_android_sdk/sources/android-xx
location and press the
button.
Google also provides a modified version of the IntelliJ IDE called Android Studio for developing Android applications.
This book uses Eclipse for its description, but a very similar functionality is available for Android Studio. See Installing Android Studio to learn how to install and use it.
The following description assumes that you already have a flavor of
the Eclipse IDE installed which you want to update to develop
Android applications.
Use the
Eclipse update manager via
→ and start the android
to install all available components
for
the
Android Development
Tools
(ADT) from the following URL:
https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
After the new Android development components are installed, you will be prompted to install the Android SDK. You can use the following wizard or go to the next section to learn how to do it manually.
After the installation of the ADT the Eclipse tooling allows to download the Android SDK automatically. Alternatively you can also manually download the Android SDK from the Android SDK download page.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
The download contains a zip file, which you can extract to any
place
in
your file system, e.g., on my Linux system I placed it into the
/home/vogella/android-sdks
folder.
Avoid
using spaces in the path name,
otherwise
you may experience
problems with the usage of the Android
SDK.
You also have to define the location of the Android SDK in the Eclipse Preferences. In Eclipse open the Preferences dialog via the menu → . Select Android and enter the installation path of the Android SDK.
This tutorial is Open Content under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DE license. Source code in this tutorial is distributed under the Eclipse Public License. See the vogella License page for details on the terms of reuse.
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