12 January 2012

The Better Guide to Installing Android SDK

I wasn’t impressed with Android team on their documentation for installing Android SDK. It is long, and jumps from page to page. Here is my better version:

 

Step 1 – Install Eclipse IDE

Go to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and download Eclipse Classic (the latest version is 3.7.1).

After downloading, install and verify that it can run.

Note: If there is any error, check the System Requirements. In particular, you might need to install the JDK.

 

Step 2 – Install Android SDK

Go to http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and download the Android SDK package.

For Mac and Linux users, download the zip/tgz package and unpack it to a safe location. The SDK files will be unpacked into a directory named android-sdk-. Proceed to step (3).

For Windows users, download the .exe package, and run it to install. After installation is complete, the installation wizard will launch the Android SDK and AVD Manager. There is a slight inconsistent behaviour for Windows users here. Go to step (4) first, and return back to step (3) after you have finish step (4).

 

Step 3 – Install ADT Plugin

  1. Start Eclipse, select Help > Install New Software. Click Add.
  2. Enter “ADT Plugin” for Name and the following for Location:
**https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/**
  1. Click OK
  2. Click Next, Next, Next.. and Finish
  3. When the installation completes, restart Eclipse.
  4. In Eclipse, select Window > Preferences (Mac OS X: Eclipse > Preferences).
  5. Select Android from the left panel.
  6. For the SDK Location in the main panel, click Browse and locate your downloaded SDK directory.
  7. Click Apply, then OK.

Step 4 – Adding Android Platforms

The Android SDK uses a modular structure that separates the major parts of the SDK. Specifically, the different versions of Android OS are each a module. To develop for a particular version, you would need to add the platform for that version.

To do so, from within Eclipse, select Window > Android SDK and AVD Manager.

Go to Available Packages, and select at least 1 platform. You may select additional platforms if you require.

Click Install Selected to download and install. Done!

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