AIM: Installation of Android ADT
for
Eclipse
Theory:
What is Android
to recent smart phones or mini computers, mobile OS has come
far
away. Especially for smart
phones, Mobile OS has greatly evolved from Palm OS in 1996 to
Windows pocket PC in 2000 then to Blackberry OS and Android.
One of the
most widely used mobile OS
these days is ANDROID.
Android is a
software bunch
comprising not only operating system but also middleware and key applications. Android Inc
was
founded in Palo Alto of California, U.S. by Andy Rubin, Rich miner, Nick sears and Chris
White in 2003. Later Android Inc. was acquired by Google in 2005. After original release there have been number
of
updates in the original version of Android.
Features &
Specifications
features and specifications of android are:
Android comes with an
Android market which is an
online software store. It was developed by
Google.
It
allows Android
users
to select, and download
applications
developed by third
party
developers and use them. There are around 2.0 lack+ games, application and widgets available on the market for users.
Android
applications are
written
in java programming language. Android
is
available as open
source
for
developers to develop applications which can be further used for selling in android
market. There are around 200000 applications developed for android with over 3 billion+
downloads. Android
relies
on Linux version
2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model.
For
software development, Android provides Android SDK (Software development kit). Read more about open
source software.
Applications
These are the basics of Android applications:
• Android applications are composed of one or more application components (activities, services, content providers, and
broadcast receivers)
• Each component performs a different role in the overall application behavior, and each one
can be activated individually (even by other applications)
• The manifest file must declare all components in the application and should also declare all
application requirements, such as the
minimum version of Android required and any hardware
configurations required
• Non-code
application resources (images, strings,
layout files, etc.)
should
include alternatives for different device configurations (such as different strings for different languages)
Google, for software development and application
development, had launched two competitions
ADC1 and ADC2 for the most innovative applications
for
Android. It offered prizes of USD 10
million combined in ADC1 and 2. ADC1
was launched in January 2008 and ADC 2 was
launched in May
2009. These competitions helped Google a
lot
in making Android better, more user
friendly, advanced and interactive.
Step 1 - Setup Java
Development Kit (JDK)
You can download the latest
version of Java JDK from
Oracle's
Java site: Java SE
Downloads. You will find instructions for installing JDK in downloaded files, follow the given instructions
to install and configure the setup. Finally set
PATH
and JAVA_HOME environment variables to refer to the directory that contains java and
javac, typically java_install_dir/bin and
java_install_dir respectively.
If you
are running Windows
and installed the JDK in C:\jdk1.6.0_15, you would have to put
the following line in your
C:\autoexec.bat file.
set PATH=C:\jdk1.6.0_15\bin;%PATH%
set JAVA_HOME=C:\jdk1.6.0_15
Alternatively, you
could also right-click on My Computer, select
Properties, then Advanced, then
Environment
Variables. Then, you would update the PATH value
and press the OK
button.
On Linux, if the
SDK is installed in /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_15
and you
use
the C shell, you
would put the following code into your .cshrc file.
setenv
PATH /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_15/bin:$PATH
setenv
JAVA_HOME /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_15
Alternatively,
if you
use an Integrated
Development Environment
(IDE) Eclipse,
then it will know automatically where you
have installed your Java.
Step 2
- Setup Android SDK
You
can download the latest
version of Android SDK from
Android official website :
Android SDK Downloads. If you are installing SDK on
Windows
machine, then you will find
a installer_rXX-windows.exe,
so just download and run
this exe which will launch Android
SDK Tool Setup wizard
to guide you throughout of the installation, so just follow the instructions
carefully. Finally you
will have Android SDK Tools installed on your machine.
If you
are installing SDK either
on Mac OS or Linux, check the instructions provided along with
the downloaded android-sdk_rXX-macosx.zip file
for Mac OS and android-sdk_rXX-linux.tgz
file for Linux. This tutorial
will consider that you are going to
setup your environment on
Windows machine having Windows
7 operating system.
So let's launch
Android SDK
Manager using the option All
Programs >
Android SDK Tools > SDK Manager, this will give you following window:
Once you launched
SDK
manager, its time to install
other required packages. By default it will
list down total 7 packages to be
installed, but
I will suggest to
de-select Documentation
for Android SDK and Samples for SDK packages
to reduce installation time.
Next
click Install 7
Packages button to proceed, which
will display following dialogue box:
Step 3
- Setup Eclipse IDE
All
the
examples in this
tutorial have been
written using Eclipse IDE. So I would suggest you
should have latest version
of Eclipse installed on your machine.
To
install Eclipse IDE,
download the latest
Eclipse binaries from
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/.
Once you downloaded the installation,
unpack the binary
distribution into a convenient location. For example in C:\eclipse on windows, or
/usr/local/eclipse on Linux and finally set
PATH
variable appropriately.
Eclipse
can
be
started by executing the following commands
on windows machine, or you can
simply double click on eclipse.exe
%C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe
Eclipse
can
be
started by executing the following commands
on Linux machine:
$/usr/local/eclipse/eclipse
Step 4 - Setup Android Development Tools (ADT) Plugin
This
step will help you in setting Android Development Tool plugin for Eclipse. Let's
start
with launching Eclipse
and then, choose Help > Software Updates > Install New Software. This will display the following dialogue box.
Now use Add button to add ADT Plugin as name
and https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ as the location. Then click OK to
add this location, as
soon as you will click OK button to add this location, Eclipse starts
searching for the plug-in available
the given
location and
finally lists down the found plugins.
Now select
all the listed plug-ins
using Select All button
and click Next button
which will guide you
ahead to install
Android Development
Tools and other required plugins.
Step 5
- Create Android
Virtual Device
If your
AVD
is created successfully it means your environment
is ready for Android
application development. If you like, you can close
this window using top-right cross
button. Better you re-
start your machine and
once you
are done with
this last step, you are ready to proceed for your first
Android example but
before that we will see few
more important concepts
related to Android Application
Development.
Conclusion:
Hence installation
of Android ADT is done successfully.
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