Android Development: SDK Installation Guide

Recently, I made the jump and started playing around with Google’s Android SDK. Setting up an Android development stack is quite easy and straightforward. It can be done in a matter of minutes and let anyone dive right in to writing and compiling applications.

Here, I outline the quick and dirty basics of getting an Android development environment up and running in Windows using the Eclipse IDE. Note that aside from OS-specific properties and configurations the process should work on Linux and Mac boxes, too.

Step 1: Install the Java Development Kit

As of this writing, Android development requires JDK5 or JDK6. Download and install the version you prefer on your hard drive (i.e. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6…). For more information, check out the system requirements for Android development on the developer website.

Make sure to check that your PATH, JAVA_HOME and related environment variables are correctly pointing to the required JDK installation folder. This is specially important if you maintain older, unsupported JDK versions in your machine (i.e. JDK 1.4).

Tip: RapidEE (Rapid Environment Editor) is a great free tool to manage your environment variables since it can be a pain working with the default edit box in Windows. Give it a shot.

Step 2: Install the Eclipse IDE

Now that the JDK is set up, the next step is to download and install Eclipse IDE. I went ahead and downloaded the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (190MB) 3.5 Galileo package for Windows 32-bit. Other IDEs could also be used but Eclipse gives you the benefit of using Android-specific plugins to help in making development easier. More on that later.

Once done, simply extract the downloaded archive into a folder of your choice and it should be ready to go. You may quickly run the Eclipse executable to make sure that there are no issues like JVM problems, etc.

Step 3: Install the Android Software Development Kit

Now that Eclipse is set up, the next step is to download and install the latest Android SDK from the developer website, in this case for the Windows platform. Once downloaded simply extract the downloaded archive into a folder of your choice (i.e. C:\android_sdk_folder).

Make sure to include your SDK tools folder in the PATH environment variable (i.e.: PATH=C:\android_sdk_folder\tools).

Step 4: Configure Eclipse and install ADT Plugin

Fire up Eclipse and go to Help -> Install New Software… to bring up the install Available Software window. Here you can specify the plugin repository URL by adding a new site and entering: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/. You should now see “Developer Tools” in the Available Software list. Tick the box next to it, install and accept the licensing agreements.

Next, make sure Eclipse knows where you have installed the Android SDK by going to Window -> Preferences -> Android and specify the SDK folder in the SDK Location text field.

For more detailed information on this step, refer to Installing ATD Plugin for Eclipse on the developer website.

Step 5: Install Android Platforms

In order to start developing android applications, you must install a target development platform on which to build on. In Eclipse, go to Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager to bring up the management window. On the left panel, click on Available Packages and you should be able to see a list of platforms from https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/repository.xml. Select and install the platform of your choice (i.e. SDK Platform Android 2.1).

For more detailed information on this step, refer to Adding SDK Components on the developer website.

Next Steps

There you have it. If all went smoothly, you should now have a fully working Android development environment set up. To get started, you may want to begin reading through the developer resources found at developer.android.com or you could also try compiling your first hello world app by going through the Hello World tutorial.

Happy coding!

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